


The Turn of the Century

by madame_faust



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Bearded Dwarf Women, Blue Mountains | Ered Luin, Dwarves In Exile, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-11
Updated: 2018-01-31
Packaged: 2018-06-01 15:57:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 32,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6526630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madame_faust/pseuds/madame_faust
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thorin's 100th Name Day is coming up and his family and friends are determined to make it special for him - whether he likes it or not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I thought if I fleshed this out a bit, it could be worthy of posting somewhere other than Tumblr, so if you haven't been following it, here's a slightly more polished version.

There were many codified, stratified, rituals within Dwarven society. Some varied not at all between Clans and others were unrecognizable depending upon whether the festival in question was being conducted by Longbeard, Blacklock, or Ironfist. Yet there was one common thread which tied all Dwarves together, even beyond their common heritage as the Secret, the Unwanted, the Near-Destroyed Children of their Maker.

All Dwarves loved any excuse to have a party.

Even certain dour-faced, stubborn-willed Kings-in-Exile, who'd not made mention of the fact that he was about to turn one-hundred to a single soul of his acquaintance. His assumption was that those who cared knew when his Name Day was and that, if they chose, they could mark the occasion in some small way without his having to goad them about it. Certainly, Thorin was not looking forward to the day with any sort of blissful anticipation. It was a day, like any other. One of work and toil and scraping out a living in the West. Why should he expect more?

Well, the answer to that was obvious, to those who knew his kin: because they were determined to see him happy, if only for a hour. Whether he liked it or not.

Of course, simply _announcing_ to Thorin that he was going to be the victim of a fete thrown in his honor would never do. He'd hem and haw and either forbid it outright, or else make his sister and his cousin feel so badly for trying to do something kind for him, that they'd just give it up as causing more pain than it would joy. And so, some secrecy was necessary to ensure that, in the case that Thorin discovered their plans, they would be too far undertaken for him to call a halt. He'd simply _have_ to allow himself to be celebrated. And so they called a meeting of all interested parties to discuss the matter.

In a well-populated, smoky tavern, a small band of co-conspirators met with a singularity of purpose and an equal regard for the necessity of secrecy which would be paramount to the success of their cause.

“We could have it at our place,” Bofur offered quietly, with darting eyes and a low, insistent tone; he loved a bit of theatricality, he’d even slung his hat low over his brow as if intended to go unrecognized. 

“Too small,” Thyra said dismissively and altogether loudly. Bofur shushed her - didn’t she know what it meant to be a conspirator? “Our apartment is larger.”

“Aye, but your apartment’s full of your kin,” Bofur pointed out loudly, forgetting himself that he was supposed to be the soul of discretion. “So it comes with a crowd.”

“Aren’t me own kin to be invited?” Thyra asked, somewhat affronted.

“Of course you are!” Dís exclaimed, by far the _worst_ of all at maintaining a conspiratorial tone and look. “You’re all to be invited - your parents and your brothers and sisters, I mean. We really must keep it a small gathering, he’s not one for a lot of fuss.”

“And that means no cousins,” Dwalin said severely. “Nor second-cousins, nor friends-like-kin - no one Thorin doesn’t already know - ”

“Ah!” Bofur exclaimed, smacking his head in despair. “Not the name! You’re not to say it, now the world’ll know!”

“The world’ll know more on account o’your carrying on, so!” Víli laughed. “Come along, we’re only planning a wee party, not mounting a campaign. It’s meant to be fun!”

Fun. Right. The thing of it was, when one was dealing with Thorin Thráinul (as Dwalin well knew from years of experience) that it could take an awful lot of work and cajoling and a bit of subterfuge before ‘fun’ could be had. If he didn’t love him so well, Dwalin would hardly think it was worth the effort. 

“What if we work out who’s coming,” Thyra suggested, the very soul of practicality, “and once we’ve got a firm number, decide where it’ll be held afterward. The weather might continue fine ‘til Durin’s Day, we might be able to do it aboveground and all.”

“Right, has anyone got pen and paper about?” Dwalin asked, seizing on a good idea rather than wasting his time and breath in telling others to hush.

Silence met his inquiry.

“I don’t write,” Bofur and Víli said as one. 

“Nor do I,” Dís echoed, though Dwalin already knew that.

Thyra shook her head mutely and the others looked at Dwalin with an air of expectation. Made sense, he supposed, he being the eldest among them and the only one court-educated. Dís knew runes enough to muddle through the prayers at Temple or to read accounts of court or formal documents (Balin made certain of that), but her grasp on the Common Tongue as written largely served her for reading the occasional direction on the road or a simple order for the forge. She simply didn’t have all the education she was born to.

Dwalin did, but his lack of understanding was due more to poor aptitude than it was to missed opportunity. 

“I’ve a good memory,” he said dismissively. “And we’re most of us accounted for - everyone here, Thyra’s family - mother and father and the wee ones - ”

“My grandparents are really - ” she began, but Dwalin silenced her with a glance.

“Has Thorin met them?” he asked.

“No,” she admitted. “But I’m sure he’ll like ‘em when he does! Someday.”

“Aye, and that day _won’t_ be three weeks hence,” Dwalin replied firmly. “Anyhow, all the baker’s kin, Bofur, Víli - your brother and cousin, as well, I’m sure.”

“Oh, aye,” Bofur nodded vigorously. “Bifur’d not miss it, nor Bombur neither, now now he’s got over being afeared o’Thorin.”

“Poor fellow,” Víli chuckled. “As sets dwarves to quaking in their boots ‘fore they knows him well.”

“He’s only grumpy,” Dís objected. “Not frightful.”

“Well, if this isn’t the sorriest party I ever heard of,” Hervor remarked, squeezing in between Dwalin and Dís without asking either of them to budge up before she planted herself there. “If the most you can say of the guest of honor is that he’s grumpy and not terrifying.”

“You’re late,” Dwalin pointed out.

“Aye, but this doesn’t seem well and truly gone over, does it? Anyhow, I brought a scribe,” Hervor said, turning away from him to whistle over her shoulder. “Nori! Step lively!”

He was such a skinny little fellow, Irpa’s younger son, that he was quite lost in the crowd of dwarves filling the pub. He sat on the very end of the bench that Dís and Dwalin had claimed, on Dís’s free side, looking round at all the assembled company.

“Turn out your pockets,” Dís ordered at once.

“You won’t even get me a drink first?” Nori asked, affronted, though he was too young, by all accounts, to take his beer neat.

“I might stand you a cider if you turn out your pockets,” Dís bribed. “Go on, magpie.”

Grumbling, Nori did so and when his efforts produced no more than a piece of string and a folded bit of rag paper, along with a nubbly piece of charcoal, she made good on her word and got him a small cider. 

Nori rested his head on his hand and sighed, “Fine, fine, I’ll do the writing, since you’re all too dim to be bothered to learn.”

Dís thwapped him on the back of the head. “That’s a fine way to talk to someone who bought you a drink!”

“It’s nearly all water,” he complained.

“Hand the task to Dwalin, if you’re so vexed,” Víli said, giving Nori a toe to the shins for his cheek beneath the table. Víli was a tenant of Nori’s mother and perhaps was taking liberties, disciplining his landlady’s son, but Víli quickly learned, after a few months of abiding in his new residence, that if he didn’t try to steer Nori right, it seemed no one else would. 

Sighing Nori made to hand the charcoal to Dwalin, who refused it. “Earn your keep,” he said, “else it’s back to your mother with you.”

“Right, guests,” Thyra spoke up, trying to bring the conversation back around to productivity. “Me family - that’s meself, me father, Alfi, mother Sayra, then Ulfi, Júfi, Dalfi, Myra, and Túfi.”

“Slow down!” Nori grumbled. “I can only write so fast and you’ve too many in your household besides.”

Once his hand ceases recording names, Bofur reiterated that he, Bombur, and Bifur would be coming. Víli vouched for his own attendance, “And your Ma and Dori, I’d imagine.”

Nori made a face, “Dori doesn’t have to come.”

“Aye, he does,” Dís pinched Nori’s arm and made him howl. “He’s your brother!”

“He and Thorin don’t even _like_ each other,” Nori whinged. 

Dís looked over his head at Dwalin, seemingly expecting support.

Dwalin shrugged, “He doesn’t have to come.”


	2. Chapter Two

Thorin enjoyed the immense pleasure of being able to pretend that he was _not_ about to be the recipient of more good will than he could bear for a few warm, autumn days. But it wasn’t long before the walls of his delusions began to crumble. It started with Dís creeping in one night smelling of smoke and beer, acting very put-out to find him awake, as if she’d been caught in the middle of some illicit act.

But it could’ve been that she was anticipating being hard to wake the next morning and raising his ire over having wasted time she might have been sleeping with friends and frivolity. So he let it go.

Unfortunately, the _whispering_ followed. It could only be termed ‘whispering’ in the barest sense of the word, voices lowered somewhat from their usual volume in an effort not to be overheard. Dís and Dwalin were dwarves of diverse talents, but keeping their voices lowered was not among them. And so Thorin quite clearly caught the words, ‘invited’ and ‘just a small number’ and ‘Dori doesn’t need to come,’ so often that he could no longer fool himself into thinking that not only was he to be the victim of a party, but that Dori was coming as well.

Bless Dís and Dwalin, they were oblivious that their schemes were not as well-concealed as they might have liked. It was quite out of the blue one afternoon, a few days after the confederacy met that Thorin turned to Dwalin in the forge and said, “If you’ve got something up your sleeve, I’d rather it stayed there.”

Never let it be said that Dwalin was a pessimist at heart; he saved that thinking for his elder brother. That was one of the reasons why Balin had not been invited to participate in the earliest planning stages of the party, he was too diplomatic and shrewd to plan a strategy for what he would view as a hopeless endeavor. If Thorin had confronted Balin in such a way, it was likely that Balin would have called the whole thing off as likely to cause more trouble than it was worth.

Not so Dwalin. It was a good thing, he reflected to himself, that Dís had gone to fetch their midday meal at the bakery and would like be gone chatting with Thyra a while; he’d always had a better poker face than she. Balin might’ve put a stop to it all to spare himself a headache, but Dís was more inclined to change their plans to spare Thorin’s feelings. Not so Dwalin; aye, he knew such attention would make Thorin uncomfortable, but sometimes he thought a little discomfort was good for him. And if it wasn’t, he was in charge of ordering the mead and ale, so he could _get_ comfortable, if that was what it took.

“Hmm?” he asked, his eyes wide and innocent-looking. “What?”

Thorin only folded his arms and looked up at him with one eyebrow slightly quirked. “You know what I mean. We both know my Name Day’s coming a week before Durin’s Day. We both know that those Broadbeams wouldn’t turn their noses up at a party - ”

“I don’t know as we can say we _know_ what the Broadbeams would or wouldn’t turn their noses up at,” Dwalin replied. “We haven’t been acquainted half a twelvemonth.”

“And we know,” Thorin continued, as if he hadn’t him, “that you and Dís are wax-hearted and sentimental. Put those things together and - ”

“Still don’t know what you’re talking about,” Dwalin said. “Why don’t you speak plainly?”

Instead of speaking plainly, Thorin decided to veil his meaning in recollections. “Three years ago you turned a hundred - ”

“Aye, it’s good for you to remember that I’m older and wiser than you.”

“ - and all the celebration _that_ entailed was my buying you a pint and my sister wishing you glad tidings of the day.”

“And she gave me a kiss,” Dwalin recalled. “You’re misremembering.”

Thorin’s expression remained unimpressed. He was too young, when Erebor fell, to have many acquaintances who had made it to their hundredth year. Even Balin was only in his nineties. But he had been to a fair number of weddings, feasts before and after a successful campaign and well he remembered the Durin’s Day celebrations. Light, food, mead, and dancing for days flitted through his memory until he forced it from his thoughts. Fewer dwarves were better or more enthusiastic planners of great feasts than his grandfather. Udad would weep - had wept, he was sure - to see what passed for fun among them now.

“All I’m saying is it seems a bit unfair that you had to be satisfied with a beer and a kiss - ”

“You could make it two,” Dwalin interrupted, presenting his cheek.

Thorin shoved him away, disgruntled. “Look, all I’m saying is I don’t want - ”

“Don’t want or don’t think it’s fair?” Dwalin asked, so patiently that Thorin wanted to smack him, but couldn’t be arsed. “Because if I genuinely thought you’d hate to have the day acknowledged, I’d just shut the enterprise down - ”

“You admit there’s an enterprise?” Thorin asked, a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. It was an involuntary smile and he banished it quick as he could.

“Can’t I finish a thought?” Dwalin snapped, without any particular affront in his voice. “Anyhow, seeing as I’ve known you the longest and best of all of us if there was an enterprise and if I was aware of such a one and if I was involved in such a one, I’d do it with your best interests at heart. If, as I said, there was anything afoot to do with you or your Name Day. Which I haven’t said.”

“Mmm,” Thorin grunted, evidently unsatisfied with the whole exchange, but aware that it was unlikely to go any farther.

Dwalin smiled blandly at them and they both puttered around the forge for some minutes, lifting tools and laying them down again, brushing filings and ash off of the rim of the fire pit, poking at the coals to make them hot and otherwise wasting time.

“No music,” Thorin said softly.

“Couldn’t guarantee that,” Dwalin replied at once.

“Well, then, no dancing.”

Dwalin was quiet a minute, then said, “No dancing with you, aye, that could be arranged.”

“Nor too much food.”

“There’d be just as much food as needs be,” Dwalin said firmly.

Thorin glanced over at Dwalin, looked at him long and hard. Dwalin met his gaze steadily. “No one I don’t already know.”

Dwalin smiled broad and said, “That’d already be taken care of.”

Thorin sighed and shook his head. “You’re the damnedest - ”

“Food!”

Dís was jogging up the road toward them, holding a sack under one arm and waving with the other. Dwalin was grateful she’d come; he didn’t know how long he could be counted on to hold that sedate expression.

Thorin held his tongue for the rest of the day, though he occasionally found Dwalin and Dís talking to each other in hushed tones while his back was turn. Any time he glanced in their direction, they just smiled at him. It’d be infuriating if it wasn’t so sweet.

* * *

 

It wasn’t that Thorin objected to a bit of fun and frivolity. It wasn’t that he objected to parties in general. It was only his _own_ party that he’d rather not participate in.

He had a strong work ethic, even for a dwarf. Reward was something to be earned, he thought. He didn’t even accept a free supper at his aunt and uncle’s house without first offering to screw some hooks into the ceiling of their flat for lanterns to be hung first.

He arrived about two hours before supper was set to be given - unlike the rest of his family, Auntie Maeva had a knack for whipping up delicious meals that had value beyond being fuel for the body. She claimed she came by the talent through her study of herbology (Uncle Gróin joked that it only meant she was better equipt to poison them all, if she chose). Thorin didn’t much care how she came by it, he was good for nothing but scorching meat over flame and it hurt his pocket book to constantly apply to Thyra’s family for sustenance when he couldn’t be bothered to cook for himself.

Dís could boast no elevated culinary talents beyond baking a decent loaf of bread, and his mother...to be honest, food had not been the uppermost in her interest of late.

Coin for the Broadbeams, work for his aunt - either way, he’d not suffer the guilt of having gotten something for nothing.

Maeva was the only one at home when he arrived and she seemed surprised to see him. Her once dark auburn hair had lightened considerably over exposure to the sun on the roadways, despite her best attempts to keep her hair contained under scarves and shawls. It was now a carroty orange that she thought looked absolutely awful. Her eyebrows were so yellow that they practically blended in with the skin of her face, but he was well-practiced in reading her expressions and saw her light-colored brows arc as she opened the door. “Thorin! Come so soon? I hope you don’t think it’ll be a big job.”

Thorin shrugged self-consciously. “Just wanted to be prepared if it was more troublesome than I thought. I can come back if you - ”

But she’d already grabbed him by his arm and hauled him inside. Neither spindly nor very stout, it was unlikely his aunt could have dragged him anywhere he was not willing to be led, but her grip was very firm.“No! I’m delighted, just surprised, I haven’t had you by your lonesome since we settled, I don’t think.”

That was likely true. Thorin made the rounds from the smithy to his rooms, to the interior of the Mountains with very little variation...except for those nights when he took his supper and his company at the pub. Nights when it likely would have been more thoughtful to pay a visit to his cousins and their parents. An apology was on the tip of his tongue, but Maeva just kept chatting over him, “Busy, I’m sure you’ve been busy - did you hear we managed to get Glóin an apprenticeship? I don’t know who’s more flabbergasted, his father or his brother. Óin kept predicting he’d have to go into the mines, I don’t think I’ve ever seen the color leech from a body’s face so fast…”

“It’d be a steady payment,” Thorin said, but the thought of his irascible cousin (whose head was constantly taken up with sums and law) down a shaft all day made him quickly add, “but not for Glóin. I did hear he got a clerkship, Balin told me, I think.”

“Aye, just as well he did, for he’s the one who arranged it, bless the lad,” Maeva sighed gratefully. “It seems he has a friend or two among the scholars here - or, well, connections at least.”

She smiled sadly and Thorin who returned the expression, just as sorrowfully. Neither of them had to speak of their honored relations whose reputations preceded them, even after they were lost to dragonfire. Hurt too much.

“But!” Maeva clapped her hands briskly as if magicking the bad thoughts away. “A clerkship! Small blessings, eh?”

“Aye,” Thorin replied softly. He cleared his throat and said, “And I’ll give him some light to work by, if I can. Where did you want the lanterns placed?”

“Just here,” she said, gesturing vaguely about her; the flat his aunt and uncle claimed was only slightly larger than the one Thorin lived in with his mother and sister. Two rooms, separated by an archway between what served as the kitchen and dining room and the front room which could suffice as a sitting room, with two bedrooms on their side of the large kitchen fireplace. “The prior tenants must have lived by tallow candles, but Gróin can’t abide the smell.”

The ceilings were low, so Thorin needed only a stool to get his work done. As he drilled a hole up through the rock, his aunt tended to supper bubbling on the pot - he smelled onion strongly and it made his stomach give a rumble, which he hoped she hadn’t heard.

No such luck.

“Hungry?” she asked. “You’ve come so early, we can run out for a bite before your cousins come home, I think.”

“No, no, I’m alright,” Thorin said, knocking some of the dust from his shoulders. “I’ll just eat with the rest, it’s no bother.”

Maeva stood underneath him, squinting up at him thoughtfully. “In my professional opinion, you’re looking rather wan, my dear.”

Thorin smiled down and shrugged, “Well, I don’t know as there’s aught to be done, I’ve always been a skinny bugger.”

“Aye, but what’s hale and ordinary on a sixty-year-old doesn’t suit a dwarf who’s creeping up on a hundred,” she said, poking him in the belly, then smiled mischievously. “Actually, there’s another benefit to your coming early, I can tell you all about the wee party your dastardly cousin’s been planning behind your back.”

“Ugh,” Thorin groaned, running a finger around the rim of the hole he’d made, judging it for size. “Don’t remind me, Auntie - or could you tell him to leave off? Or have Uncle Gróin tell him?”

“I’m afraid some of our neighbors are involved,” she shook her head sadly. “And we’ve no power to make _them_ obey. I did tell your uncle to tell Dwalin to keep it small, but he only replied that Dwalin told him that Broadbeams have large families and there’s not a thing he can do on that count.”

Thorin just made a considering sort of noise - not a grunt, he was far too polite a lad to dismiss his aunt the way he might dismiss Dwalin or some acquaintance on the street - but he made it rather clear he was done with the conversation. Unfortunately, he was the only one.

“It’ll be good to have a spot of pleasure,” Maeva announced idly. “And it’s very good of you to return favors given - I heard you had quite a time at a party at midsummer.”

Thorin retrieved the hook he’d made and screwed it into the ceiling, paying closer mind to the task than was strictly called for. “A friend of Dís turn seventy-five - her family’s been kind to us.”

“And why shouldn’t they be?” Maeva asked rhetorically. “I’m all for it, myself. How often do you turn a hundred, after all?”

“But once,” Thorin sighed. He tested the hook for strength by tugging at it; well, he’d not hang a chandelier from that hook, but it’d serve for a lantern. “Do you...there’s a question of fairness, though. After all, Dwalin’s been a hundred for three years and no fuss was made.”

“He’s got another Name Day coming up in two years,” Maeva waved her hand dismissively. “If we’re still here - by the blades of our ancestors, I hope we will be - but we can all make it up to him then. You can’t expect all the Name Days that have passed before, unmarked, to be given their due before you have yours - why, you’ll be waiting until your three-hundredth year and you’ll be too old and crotchety to enjoy a moment of it.”

“Eh, there are some as would say I’m too old and crotchety now,” Thorin replied, climbing off the stool. “One on the other side?”

“If it isn’t too much trouble - and, my darling, you’ll _never_ be as old or as crotchety as your Uncle Gróin, bless his hands,” Maeva snagged Thorin’s wrist and tugged him down so she could kiss his cheek. He and Dwalin rather loomed, even over their fellow Longbeards, so they were very used to stooping to receive affection. He returned the gesture but, bent on his task as he was, immediately picked up the stool and proceeded to the other side of the room. “Is your mother coming, do you know?”

Thorin froze, one foot planted on the stool, the other on the ground. “I don’t think so.”

Maeva nodded briskly, then watched in steady silence as he affixed the second hook. As he made his way back down to the floor, she snaked her arm through his and pulled him toward the door. “Let’s go for a cup of coffee, anyway - my treat, since you’ve been so good as to do that little task for me.”

“You’re already treating me to supper,” Thorin reminded her.

“Well, I’ll keep that in mind when next I need a long arm about to tend to some little particular,” she smiled and gave his arm a squeeze. “Come along now. We can discuss what presents you want on the way.”

Thorin sighed heavily, “Would you believe me if I told you tonight’s supper was present enough?”

Maeva laughed merrily, “You know, dearie? Coming from you, I would.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just love Maeva so much, she's the best.


	3. Chapter Three

Going on long, rambling walks had become a habit of Thorin's since they'd settled. Sometimes these walks were solitary, in as much of a woodland as the Blue Mountains boasted, but often he skirted the edge of the market, eyes on the group to ward off attempts at conversation. A tap on Thorin’s shoulder made him jump a bit, but only just; it was not unusual for him to be set upon in the marketplace, either by a fellow refugee who wanted to beg a moment of his time or by a curious local. Only once did someone get his attention only to spit in his eye and curse Durin’s line, so he was cautiously optimistic that he was being called upon for conversation, not for revenge.

The fact that it was Bifur who’d gotten his attention made Thorin smile; how much better to be hailed by a friend. The purpose of these walks were to help him clear his head and at least make him slightly visible among the general populace of the Blue Mountains. Trying to follow his grandfather's example without possessing his grandfather's outgoing nature. He would stop and chat when he was spoken to, but he was generally not inclined to begin an interview on his own initiative. Bifur, however, he found very easy to talk to.

“Iron or coffee?” Bifur asked, without preamble.

Thorin blinked, certain he’d misheard or had failed to hear some critical statement. Well, Bifur was easy to talk to _most_ of the time. “Sorry?”

“Iron or coffee?“ Bifur asked again, keeping his voice low; there were nearly always Men about the marketplace, but iglishmêk had no sign for ‘coffee,’ only 'hot drink,’ and that was evidently too vague.

"Er…” Thorin trailed off, a bit at a loss. He knew that the wound Bifur suffered at the Battle of Azanulbizar caused him trouble sometimes, but he did not seem confused, his eyes were bright and intent and he stood before Thorin neither lost nor panicked, only with a steady sort of patience as he waited for him to make up his mind. “What?”

 _Which choose you_ , Bifur signed instead. Then, abruptly, Thorin understood.

“Don’t tell me you’re in on it,” he huffed and Bifur laughed, tapping on the left side of his chest with his right hand, the sign for guilt.

Thorin sighed and shook his head. Bifur took his stillness as an opportunity and linked his arm through Thorin’s, signing with his free hand, _Walk. Think._

“What’s to think about?” Thorin asked rhetorically, a corner of his mouth curling up. “You’re all a bunch of conniving plotters and I’ve had my fill of the lot of you.”

Bifur patted Thorin’s hand in his sweet-natured manner and Thorin could not muster up a thimbleful of ire for him. For Dwalin, oh, aye, he could sit and fume and harumph all day long. As for Dís…well, he assumed Dwalin put her up to it and so venting his spleen on Dwalin sufficed for both of them. But Bifur? Ah, who could be vexed with Bifur?

“ **I was still abed my hundredth,** ” Bifur led him to the edges of the market that they might talk. “ **Dwalin traveled upon the road…perhaps the preparations are not entirely selfless**.”

Thorin sighed and rolled his eyes. “Then he can have himself a grand fete in two years - and that goes double for you. Or when do you turn one-hundred and five?”

Bifur shook his head ruefully, “That has come and gone - for I am an old dwarf.”

Thorin laughed and Bifur smiled and one of the Men who was just now exiting the marketplace whistled and said, “Oi! Bifur! Got yourself a sweetheart?”

Bifur smiled and shrugged and Thorin grit his teeth, but refrained from saying or doing anything more. The Men of the Blue Mountains made free with jokes and teasing of their dwarven neighbors, but for Thorin, it was hard to tell the difference between a joke and an insult from one of them. The Men of Dale were more circumspect in their dealings with the dwarves of the Mountain - it was to them they owed their own wealth and protection, and while some risked running their mouths, most would not dare court the disfavor of Clan Longbeard. On the road, where some villages had no dealings with Mahal's children and knew of them by rumor or reputation only, they made sport of them freely or picked fights. It was this attitude Thorin had become used to contending with and learned through hard error that he must not respond to such ribbing or insult, no matter how it pained him.

Now, with their situation in some ways more precarious than ever it had been, he knew it wouldn’t do to start a quarrel with a Blue Mountains resident, even a Man. The thought made his spirits drop considerably, but he didn’t pull away and storm off as was his wont when his dander was up and there was no one to fight. Bifur was clearly a good influence on him. He should install him as a permanent fixture at the forge.

“I won’t say no to a party - I’ve been informed I have no choice - but don’t get me anything,” Thorin requested, turning his head pointedly away from the Man who had spoken to them. “You don’t have to. I don't expect it.”

They had wandered a decent distance from the village center and as much as Thorin would have liked to continue on, he knew he had work to attend to. He extricated his arm from Bifur’s, though gently and signed his farewell.

Bifur bade him good-bye in turn, but caught Thorin’s arm before he went, tugging him down so he could whisper in his ear, “Coffee, then. Fear not - I plan to avail myself of your stores, come winter.”

Unless he'd broken into a flat run, he suspected he wouldn't be able to quite escape Bifur's good intentions. And, according to custom, Bifur was doing no more than he ought, for he had been invited to a Name Day celebration and it would be a breach of etiquette to arrive empty-handed. Respect for tradition, Thorin reassured himself, was the only reason why he gave in to Bifur's insistence. Really, he was only doing Bifur a favor. It wasn't really fair that Thorin's stubbornness should cause another to look unmannerly.

“Alright,” Thorin gave in at last, with a weak smile. “If it’s to be as much your present as it is mine.”

And, if he was being _very_ honest with himself, he had to admit, he did enjoy a strong-brewed cup of coffee.

* * *

It was very difficult to determine what to give to Thorin as a present. Indeed, his family members were pulling their beards out over the matter more forcefully than his friends, for they had known him longest and could well imagine his protestations. Not only did he have nothing, he never seemed to _want_ anything. He demurred trinkets and treats in favor of purchasing essentials for those among them who were the least fortunate. It was a noble generosity of spirit that spoke well of his character. But it made him difficult to purchase for when every time something caught his sister’s eye that she thought he might like a little voice in her head which was the very echo of Thorin said, _Give it to someone else._

“What are you getting Thorin?” Dís asked, pouncing on Dwalin the very first moment she could get him alone. “I can’t think of a thing he’d want.”

A queer look came over Dwalin’s face, a bit of a cross between a grimace and a smirk. The smirk won out in the end, he crossed his arms over his chest and proclaimed haughtily, “Well, I won’t tell _you_ , lassie, as you’re liable to snatch it right out from under me, you having no ideas of your own.”

Dís squinted up at him, tilted her head to the side and stated flatly, “You don’t know either, do you?”

“No, I don’t,” Dwalin replied shortly. “Your brother’s a damned difficult dwarf to make purchases for. Not least because I can hear him whispering in my ear every time I pick up a trinket, _Don’t do it, Dwalin, don’t you do it, I don’t want it, not me, don’t want it, don’t deserve it, won’t take it._ ”

Generally, Dwalin's impressions of their family members always made Dís laugh, especially his impression of Thorin. He always got a miserable look on his face and lowered his already deep voice so it was little more than an indistinct grumble. Consequently, when Thorin was about to hear Dwalin's mimicry, his voice always rose several octaves as he maintained that he did _not_ sound like that. But Thorin was gone away for the afternoon and Dís was not inclined to laugh in her current situation - imagine showing up empty handed to her own brother's Name Day party.

“I don’t want to get him a trinket, though,” Dís said with a touch of petulance in her tone. “I want to get him summat he’ll really use, a useful thing, only he’s got all the useful things he needs. And I know he wouldn’t want a harp.”

They neither of them could afford such an instrument, but Thorin was just as likely to hurl it at their heads if they could. He’d say it was a waste of money, though he played prettily enough in his youth.

The two fell into a contemplative silence, though they largely spent their joined reverie wondering when the other would finally come up with an idea that would solve their problem. As a result they were still sitting in idleness when Balin happened by the shop

“What are you getting Thorin for his Name Day?” Dís and Dwalin asked him as one.

Balin blinked. “That’s uncanny.”

“We’re both in a muddle,” Dís lamented. “I can’t think of aught to get him that isn’t either too expensive or something he won’t use. You’re very clever, Balin, what are you getting him?”

“A book,” Balin said decisively. “There’s a frivolous enough novel that I recall he was rather fond of once upon a time - dwarrowlass goes on holiday to one of the ancient kingdoms in the Orocarni, falls in with an old family that seems to house a dark secret, turns out it wasn’t anything at all. It’s amusing enough, I don’t want him brooding over stories on top of everything else.”

“Troubles enough in the world,” Dwalin muttered under his breath. Then, more loudly, inquired, “What else did he used to read?”

“Why are you asking me?” Balin asked, raising an eyebrow. “You two shared quarters when you were apprenticed, surely you - ”

Dwalin rolled his eyes, “Oh, aye, when I was an apprentice I had nothing at all better to do than laze about and watch Thorin get at his nightly reading.”

Balin didn’t say anything. His mouth thinned into a firm line that looked disapproving, but might have just been what his face looked like when he wasn’t smiling. As a matter of interest, when Dwalin did an impression of Balin, though he pitched his voice up high as it could go, he always drew his brows together and made his expression as furious as stormclouds. Despite all of Balin's pretensions, his brother maintained he was not a dwarf with a naturally cheerful aspect.

“You could buy him a pound of coffee beans,” Balin suggested at last.

“No,” Dwalin shook his head.

“ _Everyone_ who knows him’ll get him coffee!” Dís exclaimed. “It’s all our friends know about him, Thorin never talks about himself, but he does drink coffee. You might as well tell us to buy him a ham as well.”

“It would be a practical gift,” was all Balin would say which told Dwalin, at least, that a suggestion of a ham dinner was the next on his list. Clever, Balin might be, but no one could accuse him of exercising any particular creativity in his thinking.

It would do no good at all for Dís and Dwalin to hie themselves to a bookstore in search for a volume to tempt Thorin. Neither of them read, nor did they know Thorin’s personal tastes beyond the fact that he liked to read, but had little time and fewer opportunities to do so. Sometimes, when he was having an exceptionally indulgent day, he would duck into a bindery or even spend a penny on a newspaper when they were passing through the odd city that had a press. But ordinarily he simply did without.

They could not give him money; it was gauche to give one the means to purchase a present in lieu of a present - felt too much to dwarves as if they were being paid off by friends and family, a gift of duty rather than true affection.

“Hey!” Dwalin exclaimed suddenly. He had such a booming voice that, though Balin and Dís knew him well, they still jumped at the sound of it.

“You had best have sighted an orc attack to give such a bellow,” Balin said warningly, looking over his shoulder as if he expected a horde of monsters to come bearing down on them, knives at the ready.

“Nah, I’m just _brilliant_ , that’s all,” Dwalin declared smugly. Clapping Dís on the shoulder, he marched her out of the smithy. “Mind the shop, Balin!”

“Where are you- ? Come _back_ here, I don’t know the first thing about smithing!”

But Dwalin strode quickly away, walking so fast that Dís was jogging along. “Where are we going?” she asked, torn between abandoning her post and following her cousin - as business had been particularly slow that day, she ultimately chose the latter prospect.

“To buy your brother a present he’ll adore, one he won’t be able to say no to,” Dwalin declared triumphantly. “Is he following us?”

“Balin? No, he’s not. Why didn’t you tell him where we were going?”

Dwalin snorted. “I don’t want him stealing my good idea.”

Their destination was an interior chamber of the mountain range. Dís had only ventured within the rock that surrounded the village a handful of times when she was accompanying Thorin on some official business. _His_ business, of course, not hers, for while he was King Under the Mountain she was only his ragamuffin sister who was not of age and therefore had nothing of importance to say to anybody. The cool gray stone of the Ered Luin had a bluish tint to it that left her blinking in the absence of light as her eyes adjusted from the brilliant, sunny day they were leaving outside. The stone was elegantly carved in sweeping arches with intricate knots, lined in silver and platinum to give some shine and extra luster for the torchlights to gleam upon.

Dís was very conscious of her dirty clothes and the grime on her fingers as she blinked about, eyes roaming over the fashionably dressed dwarves who called this more developed part of the Mountain home. The village outside was much built up since the Mountains had been laid waste to thousands of years before, but though it was homely enough, the square rough apartment and occasional Mannish wooden dwellings hardly looked so grand or impressive. Or so clean.

“Are we allowed inside?” Dís asked Dwalin quietly. “Thorin isn’t with us.”

Dwalin gave her a queer look. “No law against it - anyhow, we’re both of us of a noble house, if we get any trouble, I’ll just start reciting the genealogy while you go off running.”

Dís smiled and gave Dwalin a quick, tight squeeze around the waist, “Aww, I’d never run off on you.”

Laughing, he ruffled her hair, “You might if I go on all the way back to Óin I. Stand there, I’m making an inquiry.”

Dís stood by and tried her best not to look awkward and out of place - no easy feat since the portion of the range in which they were did not seem to house those dwarves who worked among soot and steel; there wasn’t a trace of dust to be seen among the dwarves who thronged to and fro, all of whom were well-attired and whose hands seemed thoroughly cleaned. She was _sure_ she and Dwalin would be scolded for carrying on the soles of their boots traces of dirt from the out-of-doors.

But they were not and Dwalin returned a few minutes later, having spoken to a guardsman. “We’re not far.”

Not far from _what_ , she wanted to ask, but didn’t; Dwalin seemed happy to keep his own counsel, nearly giddy to have a surprise clattering about in his mind. Dís couldn’t be annoyed with him if she tried; when Dwalin was cheerful, it followed that the rest of the world ought to be made merry by his good humor.

He hauled open a large stone door and ushered her inside. It was a chamber with a high-vaulted ceiling - actually, a series of chambers - lit by flames that were well-shielded in case a careless elbow should topple a lamp. Dís noticed the presence of fire buckets before she understood their purpose. There were books _everywhere_ , crammed onto shelves from the ceiling to the floors, some locked up behind gates built into the shelves, others stacked on rolling carts. None of them looked particularly new, so it was with some confusion that Dís asked, “I thought we weren’t going to a shop?”

“This is a _library_ ,” Dwalin corrected her and she nodded, feeling a little stupid for not realizing that at once. She supposed she could be forgiven. Unlike her elder brother, she’d not been to a library once in her memory.

Dirty hands and all, Dwalin strode confidently up to a large desk, behind which stood several dwarves, all of whom seemed to be very busy. Dís assumed they would ask them to come back later, but as soon as Dwalin got within talking range a red-headed young dwarrowdam looked up and smiled at them.

“How can I help you?” she asked, laying aside her work and giving them all her attention.

“I’ve a question,” Dwalin said and she nodded eagerly, as if she loved nothing more than answering queries all day long. “Can I purchase a subscription for a friend by proxy or does it all have to be done in person?”

“What a good question!” she exclaimed and Dís almost giggled; really her enthusiasm seemed silly, but that was the way of things when a dwarf was truly Made for their craft. She was sure she seemed odd when she talked of axes. “I _think_ it should be alright - so long as you’re only just purchasing, I mean - but let me ask my master, one moment.”

Dwalin smiled, satisfied, and waited, apparently very much at his ease. “That’s the nice thing about library apprentices, they’re always willing to jump up get the job done - they just haven’t any right idea how to do it.”

“What about the masters?” Dís asked.

Dwalin laughed, a loud sound in the hushed space. Dís was shocked to hear the sound of shushing - no one shushed _Dwalin_ of all dwarves! - but it only made him grin broadly.

The lass returned with an older ‘dam beside her, who had to be the master. “I understand you wished to purchase a subscription?”

“For a friend,” Dwalin confirmed. “Is it a tiered membership?”

“It is,” the ‘dam said, sounding pleased that Dwalin would ask. “The general laws are accessible to anyone who has need, though they can’t be removed from the reading room. The lending library may be browsed by anyone, member or guest, but the books must remain within the library proper without a pass. And the archives are accessible only by subscription - which must be purchased separately - or by a voucher by a member in good standing.”

“Hang the archives,” Dwalin replied, all smiles and good humor. “I’ve just come about the lending library. You charge annually or once a five-year?”

“Either is fine,” the ‘dam said, then beckoned Dwalin closer and whispered, “the five-year is more expensive, but you do save on the whole if you buy a long-term membership.” Then she quoted the price.

Dís was a little staggered; surely they could simply buy Thorin five years’ worth of books for such a sum! But Dwalin just stroked his beard and nodded his head.

“And the yearly?”

“You could render payment on a quarterly basis,” the ‘dam informed him before she quoted the lesser sum. Dís still thought it seemed like an awful lot of money to pay for the privilege of reading books one would have to give back again, but at least that amount they could afford.

“The yearly’ll do me,” Dwalin said, then he turned to Dís and added, “Eh?”

Dís shrugged, but thought that she might as well look as decided as Dwalin did and then nodded vigorously. “Sounds about right.”

The ‘dam seemed as if she wasn’t going to take their offer without attempting to talk them into the longer subscription for the higher price, but apparently thought better of arguing for she only nodded and said, “Very well - your friend will have to come in themself to answer a few questions, age, appearance, residence - ”

“Oh, I can tell you all that,” Dís said, perhaps speaking a little too overconfidently, in her desire to seem merely competent. “He’s my brother we look just alike and he’s a hundred in a week.”

The ‘dam’s smile grew indulgent, the sort of look one gave to a child who’d done something wrong - harmless, but wrong. “I’d never doubt your honesty, but your brother will have to come himself. I can only register payment today - did you intend to pay today?”

Dwalin confirmed that they did and he laid out his coins to be counted as Dís contributed her own to the pile. It wasn’t a bad bargain, now that she really thought about it. Books were expensive, after all. Perhaps it was a nice thing to be able to read as many as one wanted for a smallish fee. And since Thorin had to return them when he was done, they wouldn’t clutter their rooms. Ama would like that.

“Right, I’ll just need your names,” she said, taking up a quill and looking at them expectantly.

“Dwalin Fundinul,” Dwalin said and the ‘dam nodded all very serenely, then she paused half-way through rendering it and the quill fell from her fingers, smearing ink all over her counting book.

“Dwalin - _Fundin_ ul?” she asked incredulously, looking him up and down as if trying to make out whether or not he was genuine diamond or just cut glass. “Not that - are you...was your mother…?”

A curious stiffening spread from Dwalin's shoulders down his back. If he'd been trying to look every bit the warrior that his reputation said he was, he certainly did a good job. Dís glanced him over out of the corner of her eye in some confusion. Just moments ago he'd been his jovial, charming self, the same Dwalin she saw nearly every day. The _actual_ Dwalin, as she thought of him. Not the _legendary_ Dwalin who was some force of nature with axes for arms and a granite carved-brow that never smiled and flinty eyes that never cried. The Dwalin that she thought was so absurdly threatening that it was funny, but she wasn't laughing now.

“Aye, and this here’s Sigdís Thráinul,” Dwalin said brusquely, a sharp change from his chatty manner earlier. Dís squirmed beside him, wondering whether or not the ‘dam had said something wrong and whether she ought to have caught it.

“Oh,” the ‘dam said quietly. Then, louder, “ _Oh_!” and she got herself shushed by the reading dwarrows. “And the application is for…”

“Thorin, son of Thráin, King Under the Mountain,” Dwalin replied in that same hard tone. “Are we finished?”

“Oh, aye, of course, he’ll just need to...to come by. I do beg your pardon - and your _uncle_ was - ”

“Good day to you,” Dwalin said, seizing Dís by the arm and dragging her out of the library. Once they were outside the mountain proper, she jerked her arm away from his hand.

“What was that?” she asked. “One moment you’re chattering away and the next we’re running out as if the place was on fire.”

Dwalin shrugged, his expression closed-off and dark. “I don’t talk much to strangers, no need.”

“But that’s nonsense!” Dís declared, hurrying along as he stomped back to the smithy. “You just were! You were _just_ talking to that ‘dam all about subscriptions and archives and things! And then you stopped, what’d she do?”

“Got a soft spot for librarians,” Dwalin muttered and the words were so low and his tone so rough that Dís was _sure_ she’d misheard. Absolutely sure. For what use did Dwalin have for libraries? Oh, aye, he was witty, she knew that as well as she knew anything, but he didn’t read. Dwalin had always kept tales of lore in his head, as long as Dís could remember. He could recite and recall with the best of them, but she’d never seen him with a book, not ever.

When Dís did not reply, he added, more loudly, “I don’t care to discuss family with strangers. That’s all.”

“What family?” Dís asked and the question stopped Dwalin in his tracks. She had been walking along too quickly to stop herself and slammed directly into his back.

Dwalin turned round just in time to steady her before she landed on the ground.

He looked into her eyes in a way that made her want to look away or blink or slink down into the earth. Dís was unafraid of Dwalin - thought it was absurd that anyone _would_ be afraid of Dwalin - but in that moment she felt cowed by him as she never had before.

“Nevermind,” he said at last, releasing her shoulders and trudging back to the smithy. “Step lively. Balin’s likely fit to be tied.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warning:** For **language** , Dwalin just likes to swear.

Dwalin was the one who’d proposed going out for drinks. Thorin expected the offer to be accompanied by a teasing insistence that he pay all night since he owed Dwalin restitution for his paltry Name Day present of three years ago, but he hadn’t said anything about it. Actually, to be entirely honest, he’d not said anything at all other than, “Pub?”

To which Thorin replied, “Alright.”

And that was it, a word apiece was the extent of their conversation after they’d shut down the shop for the day and seen Dís off (Thyra’s mother and father were having an evening to themselves and she generously offered to see to the wee ones so that Thyra wouldn’t be minding them alone). 

Thorin spoke more to the barmaid, “Two stouts, please,” than he had to his own cousin. And while, in company, they might choose to communicate via meaningful expressions and rolls of the eyes, when they were alone they talked fluently enough. But not tonight. 

Bildr’s pub turned out to be one of the finest drinking establishments Thorin had ever spent coin in. At a glance, it wasn’t much, a bit of a hole in the wall, really. It was partly above-ground, but it had definitely been made with dwarves in mind - though Men who didn’t mind stooping had no trouble sidling up to the bar and ordering a pint. It was the quality of the ale, stout, porter, lager, mead, and whatever else he had in kegs behind the bar that drew the crowds more than the atmosphere or ambiance. All well and good, in general, but the silence that stretched between Thorin and Dwalin was noticeable and uncomfortable, given that they couldn’t pretend they were struck dumb by the architecture or adornment of the place.

“Summat on your mind?” Thorin asked, finally. “Brooding over a present for me? I’d not say no to a good ham breakfast, if you’re truly stumped.”

“Oh, don’t worry on that score,” Dwalin replied, nose well buried in his cup. “It’s well in hand. It’s only...ah, I don’t want to trouble you.”

Thorin leaned back upon his seat and spread his arms, “If I’m to be showered with gifts, mead, and well-wishes soon, I think I can take a wee sample of trouble. Really. Go on.”

_You’re a damnable hypocrite,_ Dwalin _almost_ replied. _So willing to let us all heap our woes upon you, but you’d let us have your hands before you’d complain about a stone in your boot._ But that wasn’t the sort of trouble Thorin was asking for. 

“I lost my temper with little Dís,” Dwalin said finally. 

Thorin’s mouth twitched into something that might have been a smile had he not tightened his lips and smoothed the expression. “Really? I’d like to see what _that_ looked like, since I’m sure you’ve never spoke sharp to her in all her days. She didn’t seem any the worse for it, when I saw her last. What’d she do?”

“Nothing,” Dwalin replied at once. “Wasn’t her fault, it was mine, I dragged her off to the...never you mind just _where_ , but we went into the range and I got melancholy. And she just asked an innocent question and I shut her up about it.”

“Oh,” Thorin said, some of his levity tempered by Dwalin’s admission of feeling melancholy. While he had come a long way from the perpetually smiling dwarfling Thorin had been reared with, it still took a great deal to upset him - never mind that it took a near calamity to get Dwalin to _admit_ to feeling upset. “What about? Or should I ask?”

“Eh,” Dwalin shrugged his broad shoulders and took a draught of his beer. “It wasn’t anything, nothing worth getting fussed over. Someone...just…”

Dwalin trailed off and Thorin waited, patiently. He might be waiting for nothing at all, for it was not uncharacteristic for a conversation between the two of them to begin with open hearts and end with shut mouths. Some sorrows ran too deep to be talked of. Especially among two who were so intimately acquainted with one another’s troubles.

“Was it…” Thorin ventured to asked, “...someone going on about your Da?”

The void left by the felling of Fundin the Fearless was rapidly being filled by the reputation of his fearsome son, a son who did not at all think himself worthy of stepping into his father’s place in their songs of legend. In an effort to praise Dwalin, some dwarves made the mistake of underpraising his father. It was a fault not easily forgiven. But Dís had known Fundin and Thorin couldn’t understand how she might have asked a blundering question in the wake of such an encounter. Even she, who loved to speak near-lies to gild accounts of Dwalin’s bravery would never have been so callous as to say something unthinking about his father. 

But Dwalin shook his head and made his reply to his beer. “No. It wasn’t.”

Thorin lay aside his own mug and turned his eyes down to the woodgrain of the table. “Ah.”

If it wasn’t talk of Fundin that got Dwalin’s goat, there could only be one other who had been discussed. And this was a dwarf that Thorin could well imagine Dís having forgotten. Dwalin’s mother, the brightest, hardest-working, kindest dwarf in all the world - at least her son thought so and Thorin would never disagree with him on that count.

“Well,” Thorin said. “I suppose I can’t blame the lass. It’s not often you see wizards - though I imagine you’d expect them to make more of an impression.”

Dwalin didn’t smile, but he did raise his eyes and shake his head. “It’s been years. Even wizards...if you haven’t seen one since you were little, small wonder they get forgot.”

“Hmm,” Thorin grunted, contemplatively. Poor Missus Halldóra. Or, as Thorin had referred to her since he was thirty, ‘the wizard.’ She’d been so clever, he thought she had to have some magic about her. She’d always been a great favorite with his sister, who without fail, referred to her as ‘Dóra,’ though of course Dwalin’s mother dismissed the disrespect and treated it like an endearment. But she had been lost when the Mountain fell and, like so many of their kindred, she went undiscussed during much of their exile. Not in the least because her husband was too grieved, it was thought, to talk of her.

“Wizards and librarians,” Dwalin added. “They can be frightful, you know? Well, she didn’t.”

“Nah, _he_ wasn’t so bad, really,” Thorin shook his head, always the first dwarf to defend Dwalin’s Uncle Haldr. “Just had to...make a nuisance of yourself until he resigned himself to the fact that he wouldn’t be rid of you.”

“What was it he called you?” Dwalin asked, smirking. “Balin and I were always trolls.”

“I was a damnable orcling, without an ounce of breeding,” Thorin recalled. “I was hard on books, I’ve still...still got unpaid fines, I think. Though he always let me take a new book before my debts were paid.”

“Well, he liked you,” Dwalin acknowledged. “I remember when you went in for smithing, he was fit to be tied - he thought you’d step in to take his place.”

“Do you know, I wanted to?” Thorin said, cringing a bit at the memory of his childhood self. What a strange lad he’d been, bookish, aye, but just as fond of a scrape as reading. He’d pass as many hours in the library as on the tourney field, speaking too loudly in the former and strolling off to a quiet corner to curl up with a book in the latter. “When I was...twenty, or so, I thought his was the noblest craft and that your uncle was the wisest, luckiest of dwarves to have come into it.”

“Aye, and then you actually got to talking to him and that turned your fancy…”

“It wasn’t his fault!” Thorin exclaimed, defensive of Haldr to the last. “Nah, it’s like I said, I was hard on books - taking them out of doors, tucking one along in my pack on hunting trips, falling asleep reading and knocking them on the floor. I wasn’t Made for caring for them, keeping them, and enforcing fines on other dwarves for the same crimes I was guilty of. Steel was more forgiving, I thought.”

Dwalin chuckled and shook his head, “Poor Uncle Haldr, I think you broke his heart.”

“It was for the best,” Thorin shrugged. “He’d have lost all his affection for me when he realized that I was all enthusiasm and no skill. Umad was overjoyed, anyway.”

“Aye,” Dwalin nodded. “Auntie never read a book in her life, to hear her tell it. I don’t think she knew where the library _was_.”

“Well, it wasn’t her business,” Thorin agreed. “Udad wasn’t much of a reader either. Especially tales of lore - he had his own ideas about what happened.”

“Oh, aye, Thrór used to tease my mother about it,” Dwalin remembered. “Needle her, anyway, going on and on about this or that thing until she couldn’t take it anymore, ‘You do know that’s not _quite_ how it happened?’ and he’d just shrug and smile and say, ‘Aye, but I like my telling better.’”

“King’s privilege,” Thorin nodded. “Gets to talk himself up as much as he likes and only the Queen can tell him any different.”

“That’s a delicate way of putting it,” Dwalin snorted. “My amad would just shake her head and say it was a good job Thrór hadn’t the inclination to write a history for he’d be poisoning the next generation of young minds. And when he got too high on himself Auntie would tell him to fuck right off. But would he listen?”

“Just laughed,” Thorin replied. “Just laughed.”

The silence settled over them once again, but it was not tense or oppressive, weighty with words unspoken. They were both caught up in memories, conversations at the dining hall or in private apartments, occasionally out in the sunshine where the Queen liked to take the family riding or walking or hunting. They’d been happy, once. Sometimes, even for them, it was hard to remember. 

“I don’t think Dís’ll hold a grudge,” Thorin said when they finished their beer. “If you’re really bothered, you might get her a treat, make it up to her.”

“I might,” Dwalin acknowledged. “If I had any spare coin left over.”

Thorin stopped in his tracks on the way to the door, “You best not have bought me anything expensive. You _know_ I don’t want - ”

Dwalin smiled and put an arm around Thorin’s shoulder, leading him to the door. “I’m not saying another word about it. You’ll get what you’ll get and you’ll be pleasant about it.”

Thorin raised an eyebrow, “Will I?”

“Aye, you will,” Dwalin replied. “If you know what’s good for you.”


	5. Chapter 5

Though Thorin attempted to maintain a stoical demeanor in public as much as possible, it would not be true to say that he was a difficult dwarf to rattle. Ill-thought comments relating to his people’s exile, bad jokes about the jingling of extra coins in one’s pockets attracting dragons, even the occasional clang of a cartwheel over a sharp rock - setting a tinker’s cart to rattling in a way that reminded him of the clash of steel on a hot summer’s day - could cause him to lose his composure, his temper, his humor, or all three at once. 

And having one’s hair unexpectedly tugged in a public street would cause anyone to jump and yelp. Certainly it wasn’t only a quirk of Thorin’s nature that made him turn around quick as blinking and catch the wrist of the dwarf who had accosted him, drawing the offender onto his toes, bringing them eye to eye. When he saw that he’d caught his cousin Glóin, his grip did not slacken, but his expression dropped from alarm into mere annoyance. 

“Couldn’t have ‘halloed’ me, could you?” Thorin asked, dragging him off the bustling street and under the awning of an obliging shop. 

“You wouldn’t have turned round - anyway, I’m late,” Glóin huffed as if it was Thorin who’d caught him off-guard and not the other way round. “What am I to give you - just tell me straight out and be quick about it, would you? I’ll not be made to guess as I’m going to the trouble of buying you a present with my own coin.”

“You don’t _have_ to - ”

“Oh, come along we both know I do - and let me go, my fingers are turning purple and I’ve got writing to do today,” Glóin complained, trying to wrench his arm free without success. He was a thick-limbed lad, but Thorin was the elder of the two and irritation lent him strength.

“A rasher of bacon,” Thorin said flatly. 

Glóin blew out an exasperated breath and exclaimed, “Be serious!”

Why it should be assumed that he was _not_ serious was a mystery to Thorin, but it seemed his kin was determined to give him _things_ and not _food_. Perhaps he ought to take Auntie Maeva’s comments to heart - could be everyone thought he’d rather have hand-wrought gifts because he didn’t care overmuch for eating.

“I don’t know - whatever you like,” Thorin said at last. “Pens or something - I’m sure you’ve enough of them about to last several lifetimes. Oh, and best of luck with the apprenticeship, though I’m sure you don’t need it.”

“Nice of you to remember,” Glóin muttered in a manner that indicated he didn’t think it was ‘nice’ of Thorin at all - or rather, that too much time had passed to consider the well-wishes to be wrought of kindness rather than duty. “Pens...I’ll not hear the end of it from my brother. Do you want a nice, clean, ream of paper as well? Or a half-full shaker of pounce?”

“No, really,” Thorin said, releasing Glóin at last so that he could run a hand through his hair. “I never have one about me and if I’ve cause to sign a contract or apply my name legally, I’ve got to borrow one from an obliging judge, it’s embarrassing.”

The last he’d not meant to say, it just sort of tumbled out. It was an unusual state of affairs, for Thorin was so used to minding his tongue that he hardly ever said exactly what was on his mind, nevermind speaking without thinking. It was a bad slip too, for Glóin was not of a sympathetic disposition. Despite the fact that his parents were both Healers, he’d never had much of compassion about him. Not that he was unfeeling, it was only he didn’t really know what to do when others’ troubles were dropped in his lap, even close kin.

The tendency bore out and as such Glóin only reacted to the news of his cousin’s embarrassment by dropping his eyes and shuffling his feet, waiting for Thorin to say something else so that he did not have to reassure him or otherwise take charge of soothing Thorin’s feelings. 

Fortunately for him, Thorin also wasn’t possessed of a terribly soothing manner himself and so didn’t prolong his suffering.

“Pens,” Thorin said again. “Three. One to use, one to keep in case I misplace the first, and a third for luck. That’s what you can give me. And I’ll tell your brother to keep his tongue in his head if he’s got aught to say about it.”

“Fine,” Glóin said, nodding decisively, with relief in his face. “But I’ll buy them, to be sure. I’m positive that if I filch one, it’ll be deducted from my allowance - if I’m not charged for tardiness, you’ve kept me behind my time!”

“You stopped me!” Thorin shouted, but it was too late, for Glóin was jogging down the road and did not hear him above the noisy fray of the comings and goings of the high street. It would be pointless to add that Thorin was on his way to work himself and now was equally late, so he swallowed his complaining and continued on his path.

The forge was his final stop of the morning for it was his task to fetch breakfast for them. Dís and Thorin had largely left off taking breakfast at home because their mother’s portion was perpetually left untouched and it was hard on both of them to scrape it into the fire every evening. For some reason, they could not countenance eating it themselves.They’d exclusively begun bringing pasties, buns, and the like to the forge from Thyra’s family’s bake shop (and, had to admit, that it was a more satisfying meal than dry eggs and toast). 

A waste of money? Perhaps, but Thorin justified the expense by concluding that it made them all more productive, cutting out the general complaining about having eaten an awful breakfast and speculating on what they ought to purchase for their noontime meal. Certainly Dwalin had no quarrel with Thorin and Dís’s indulgence; for every sweet cake or savory bread they ate, he had a tendency to help himself to two.

There was something to be said for leaving his visit a bit late - Thorin managed to come in-between crowds so there were only a few lazy miners who were running late to their shifts in the morning or sleepy miners who were nabbing a bit of supper before heading home to bed. He wasn’t long to wait before Sayra, Thyra’s mother, cheerfully called out, “Thorin! How fare you this morning, me love?”

He was convinced that she’d begun habitually referring to him as ‘love’ when she discovered that he was a blusher. His ears pinked right up at the word and he couldn’t help smiling when he replied, “On whatever you’ll give me, ma’am, for it’s all fine.”

“Ah, but you have your favorites - sausage bread for the Longbeards!” Sayra called over her shoulder to her kin and employees in the kitchen beyond. Confidentially, she added to Thorin, “We always cut your pieces a bit more generously, you know, on account o’your being so tall.”

Thorin laughed and said he appreciated the gesture very much. 

Sayra smiled back, but said, “I’m always pleased to see you, lad, but I got to admit, that cousin o’yours got charm coming out of his ears. When I telled him that I cut your bread special, he gave me a kiss!”

“That sounds like Dwalin,” Thorin said, rolling his eyes, but Sayra only leaned over the counter expectantly and presented her cheek. The blush travelled down his neck as Thorin leaned down and gave her a peck. “How’s that?”

“Not bad for starters,” she said, “but try and get me lips next time.”

“Oh, Ama!” Thyra exclaimed as she emerged from the back with a sack for Thorin to take. “Stop teasing him, between you and Da, you’ll run poor Thorin out and we won’t never see him again.”

“Nonsense!” Sayra declared. “They likes our cooking well enough, that’s worth a bit o’teasing, isn’t it, Thorin?”

“All that and then some,” Thorin agreed taking the sack and placing his coin on the table. “Bit heavy, eh?”

“I got your meat pies in there too,” Thyra said, waving her hands as Thorin dug round in his pockets to pay for it. “Free! For the price of a kiss!”

“Hmm,” Sayra hummed consideringly. “Send Dwalin back round for another and we’ll consider the debt paid.”

“AMA!” Thyra shouted, covering her face in her hands. Thorin chuckled and made to bid them good-day, but Thyra called him back to the counter. “As your Name Day’s coming up, we want to make you something special - mind, I don’t think we’ll do you half so well as you done me!”

“Oh, I’m sure you will,” Thorin waved off the compliment. “Any of my kin can forge, it takes a blessed hand to cook.”

“That’s neither here nor there,” Sayra replied. “Anyhow, what’s it you fancy most to eat?”

“Don’t go out of your way - ”

“Nonsense o’course we must!” Thyra shushed him. “Now tell us what it is you’d like - like _best_ , I mean, and not what all you can eat any old day!”

“Honestly - _honestly_ ,” Thorin said meaningfully. “Those pork pasties of yours are my favorites.”

“But we make them up regular - ” Thyra started, but her mother shushed her.

“But we could make ‘em up _special_ for Thorin,” Sayra informed her. “I got me a holiday recipe that I hasn’t made for an age. Now, it don’t keep well, we’ll have to eat it on the night. And, begging your pardon, Thorin, but I don’t think you’re a lad who’s given to supping on a whole loin by your lonesome.”

Thorin shrugged ruefully and agreed that he wasn’t.

“So you’ll have to share - but I don’t think that’ll put you too much out of humor?”

The prospect suited Thorin well enough, but still left Thyra frowning. “Brown butter biscuits,” she said, finally. “I think you’ll like ‘em and you won’t have to give a one of ‘em away if you don’t want.”

“Don’t tell him what he will and won’t do,” Sayra tutted, giving her daughter a sharp tug of the ear. “For it’s his gift and it’s his own business what becomes of it.”

“I suppose,” Thyra sighed. “Only I like having something of me own.”

“Must be what comes of being the eldest of six,” Thorin smiled at her. “There’s only Dís and Dwalin pestering me over treats and I don’t mind so much. Especially know that I know that Dwalin only has to charm your amad for a honey cake or two.”

“Or three,” Sayra winked. “For he’s a _very_ charming lad! And you can tell him I said so.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” Thorin grinned. “It’ll be the first thing I do tell him. It’ll make his day.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I personally think Thorin is making his desires very clear, it's just that his family won't listen.


	6. Chapter 6

“You’ve got an admirer,” Thorin informed Dwalin, as promised. “Thinks your charming as anything.”

“Oh?” Dwalin asked, raising an eyebrow. “And who’d that be?”

“Sayra,” Thorin replied, grinning. 

One thing that could be said for he and Dwalin - they were both very well-liked among a certain class of dwarrowdams. Dwalin, generally, found his admirers among those ‘dams who had a child or two, were happily married, but weren’t averse to a bit of flirting (in fact, before Víli of the golden beard moved in, Dwalin had been Irpa’s avowed favorite neighbor). Thorin endeared himself to grandmothers who found his retiring nature and quiet politeness something to point out to their children and grandchildren traits to be emulated and admired. They were both well aware of who their manners made the best impression on though, in private, Dwalin did lament that his considerable charms seemed not to have any effect upon _unmarried_ dwarves. 

As if on cue, he heaved a dramatic sigh and said, “Well, given she’s got a business above her and six children, I don’t reckon as I have much of a chance there, do I?”

“Nah, not a one,” Thorin agreed good-naturedly. “But if she slips a few extra buns in with our breakfast, we all profit by it. Summat to be said for that.”

“Those aren’t the _buns_ I’d - ” Dwalin began, but immediately turned his words into a hacking cough when Dís made her entrance, bearing clean water for the day. 

“Alright?” she asked, concerned over Dwalin’s apparent illness.

“Aye,” Dwalin replied, clearing his throat. “Bit of soot went the wrong way down.”

She glanced at the hearth in confusion. “But the fire’s scarcely begun burning.”

“Nevermind about that,” Thorin interjected hastily. “No point setting the fire to lighting when we’ve not got water to quench it with, is there? What’s kept you so long?”

“Irpa waylaid me - sorry, _Missus_ Irpa waylaid me,” Dís corrected herself. She was much better about it now, but when she was a small dwarfling she had a terrible time remembering those respectful titles that children ought to use when addressing grown dwarves. “She’s making you a pair of gloves and - ”

Dís fumbled the water and clasped her hand over her mouth when she realized she’d revealed a secret. Thorin managed to catch the bucket before it tumbled to the floor, but sloshed much of its contents over his shirt. 

“I’d rather have my presents all revealed to me than send you down the river again,” he said, frowning over the half-empty bucket. “No telling when we’d see you. Hopefully you’d be back before dark, but - ”

“I’m not much for secret-keeping,” Dís interrupted him glumly, holding her hand out for the bucket. Thorin dumped what remained of it in the slack tub and handed the empty vessel back, then wrang out his shirt. “I’ll go back.”

“No, I’ll go,” her brother said, making his way through the side door and leaving a trail of water droplets in his wake. “I’ll be quicker about it, I don’t have a face that invites conversation.”

“Don’t you?” Dwalin called after him. “And who was it who dawdled with the baker’s wife all morning?”

“Not me,” Thorin called back through the open doorway. “You must’ve got yourself stuck in a day-dream.”

Though Dwalin and Thorin had ever attempted to keep their conversation clean around the younger members of their family, Dís was neither so naive (nor were they such thoughtful conversationalists as they pretended to be) that she could not understand what they were saying. She wrinkled her nose and asked, “Were you being crude about Thyra’s mother?”

“Never!” Dwalin exclaimed, affronted. “Admiring, maybe, but never crude. My mother’d never forgive me.”

Dís smiled, but didn’t say anything - she’d suspected she’d touched off some nerve when she and Dwalin went to the library, though she wasn’t sure how. As far as she knew his mother had only been the court scribe (not _only_ , for it was a very important position), not a librarian, but perhaps the sight of all those books made him remember her and feel melancholy. 

She certainly did not remember a great deal about Missus Halldóra, save that she was Mister Fundin’s wife and he missed her terribly. Sometimes she remembered her parents talking about her, in tense, rough voices, though those conversations became more and more seldom as the years went by. She could not remember Missus Halldóra being mentioned by name among their kin for years and years.

Sometimes she just ached to ask questions. To ask what her grandmother had been like, beyond the odes and songs that were occasionally sung in her memory. The fragments she did know formed a very incomplete picture. She was a great warrior who had once slain a dragon. She was very tall and broad-shouldered and had huge hands and long silver hair and a shaved chin. 

Her grandfather had loved her very much, he was the only one that Dís could ever remember talking about her with any frequency, though he hardly ever used her full name or titles. It was always, ‘Dísa did this,’ or, ‘Dísa said that,’ or, ‘Can you imagine if Dísa were here? She’d have our beards,’ for setting snares sloppily or pitching the tents in weariness so that the water got in. Dís imagined that her grandmother must have been a very exacting dwarf, something of a tyrant. But then why would her grandfather remember her so fondly?

She wondered, but asking was ever beyond her. The words lingered on the tip of her tongue, but shriveled there, like an apple left out too long in the sunlight. And even if she did gather all her courage and dare to inquire about fallen friends or kin, either she was ignored or given some halting half-answer that did not satisfy her curiosity and left her feeling guilty for having caused pain. 

“She wouldn’t?” Dís whispered quietly, probably five minutes after Dwalin had made mention of his mother. She glanced up at his face and back down again, worried that he had heard her, wishing he hadn’t.

But he had. 

“Hmm?” he asked. “Who wouldn’t?”

“Your Ama,” she said hesitantly. “She wasn’t...a forgiving sort?”

Amazingly, Dwaling laughed, “Oh, she was, she was. Especially as regards me, lesser ‘dams than she’d have sent me out for fostering, I was that troublesome. But she did expect me to mind my manners, respect my elders, all that.”

“Oh,” Dís said. So she was much like all mothers, then. All fathers too, she imagined. _Don’t just stare insolently, speak when you’re spoken too, but not when you aren’t, don’t ask too many questions, that’s rude, stop it, you’ll drive me to distraction…_

“I shouldn’t have lost my temper with you,” Dwalin said, very kindly as he reached out and rested a hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry about that. Listen, Dís, if ever you...wonder about anything or anyone, you can ask. And I shouldn’t come over moody about it.”

“Oh, no!” she shook her head, take a half-step back from him. “It was my fault, it was a stupid question I asked.”

“Ah, see now, we’re back to Ama again - there aren’t stupid questions, only impatient dwarves who don’t like to take the time to give intelligent answers,” he said with a fond look in his eyes that almost made Dís smile at him. “I was raised among librarians, it ought to fall to me to answer questions, else I do their legacy a harm.”

“But I thought your mother was a scribe,” she said, brow wrinkling in confusion.

“So she was - she was ever a busy dwarf,” Dwalin informed her. “But my uncle, Haldr, he was the chief librarian under the Mountain, the head archivist and I don’t know what else. He knew everyone’s business, it was an ideal position for he was the last dwarf under the earth to turn gossip; he liked knowing all about folk, but didn’t like talking to them.”

“I didn’t know you had another uncle!” Dís exclaimed. “Was he your mother’s brother? Did she have any other brothers or sisters?”

“Just the one,” Dwalin replied. “Which was enough, he was cantankerous. Grumpy. A wee bit unbalanced, if Uncle Gróin is to be believed.”

That did make her smile. “Well, Uncle Gróin can be a bit grumpy himself,” Dís pointed out. “Shouldn’t they have been the best of friends?”

“Eh, you’d think so,” Dwalin said. “All I know is that Uncle Gróin did something that made Uncle Haldr swear he was the most reckless, irressponsible, untrustworthy dwarf who ever lived. He had a permanent place for him in his gallery.”

“What?” Dís asked. 

And so Dwalin launched into an explanation of the wall of sketches, comissioned by his uncle to identify those dwarves who caused the librarians the greatest headaches. Those who constantly neglected to return books at the proper time, who were careless with candleflames or else forgot themselves and annotated books that did not belong to him. He’d just finished up an accounting of The Great Bookwheel Shortage and had her in stitches laughing when someone knocked in the counter of the forge and cried out, “There’s a sound as brings music to me ears!”

“Good morrow, Víli,” Dís smiled. “Haven’t you a mine to be getting to?”

“In fact, I have,” he nodded. “I was just wondering if you’d be wanting me services for a few tunes at your brother’s Name Day. It’s how I was hoping to pay me way in, by way of a present for him, as me poor auld pockets hasn’t got two pennies to rub together.”

“You’ll have to,” Dwalin said. “Thorin hasn’t got an instrument by that he can pluck away at to avoid dancing.”

“Pluck!” Víli snapped his fingers. “I got me a wager with that brother o’yours, lassie, that I’ll guess what he was brought up to play on. I fancied with were drums or pipes, but he said nay. Then I thought, well, might be a fiddle as not, mightn’t it? But he says, ‘Nah, wrong again.’ And I don’t take him for a lying sort of fellow who’d just keep on saying no to keep me out of coin. But plucking, eh? That’s a fair clue.”

“You’ll have to split the taking with me, then,” Dwalin said. “Or are you out of guesses?”

“Well, I says wager,” Víli drawled. “But we never shaked on it, nor set a price. So it’s a wager I set with meself. So you’re welcome to half o’naught at all.”

“Well, nevermind,” Dwalin chuckled and shook his head. “Leaves me no better off.”

“But it don’t leave you worse off,” Víli winked with a grin. “Plucked...hmm. Lute?”

Dís shook her head, biting her tongue; she was _awfully_ bad at keeping secrets, after all, and didn’t want to spoil Víli’s fun. 

“Lyre?”

“Nah,” Dwalin said. “Close, though.”

“Hmm…” Víli stroked his beard consideringly. 

“Aren’t you behind your time?” Dís asked, glancing skyward. Víli followed her gaze, exclaimed that he was, and took off at a tear toward the mines.

“I’ll sort it!” he vowed as he ran away. “I got all day to think on it!”

Dwalin watched him go and shook his head, “Reckon he’ll have come up with ‘harp,’ by day’s end?”

“I think so,” Dís said confidently. “Only he won’t profit by it - if he was thinking about buying Thorin a present of one, he couldn’t, not even with two pennies in his pocket.”

“Eh, there’s something to be said for satisfying curiosity,” Dwalin said, just as Thorin re-entered the forge carrying a load of water. “What took you?”

“You wouldn’t believe it,” Thorin said as he set the buckets down. “I was waylaid - ”

“Ha!” Dís exclaimed, clapping her hands in triumph.

“ - by Missus Irpa - ”

“Ha-ha!”

“ - inquiring whether I could linger a bit and have my hands measured,” he concluded. “Apparently I’ve got fingers of a length that are out of the ordinary and she didn’t want to short-shrift me.”

“Thoughtful of her,” Dwalin replied. “Why’s she hanging about the river?”

“Got washing to do,” Thorin answered. “Apparently she was meant to have a small, red-haired helper, but he skived off.”

“Sounds like him,” Dwalin rolled his eyes. “Won’t come to good, mark me.”

“Probably not,” Thorin agreed. He rubbed his eyes briefly with his hand, head bowed a bit as if considering the matter. Should he talk to Nori? Would Nori listen if he did.

The answers were, in order: Probably not and _definitely_ not. Dori would see it as an imposition. And Nori didn’t listen to anyone. 

So Thorin raised his head and, brightly as he could, informed Dís, “Secret’s in the open air, anyway, so no point in fussing over letting it escape.”

“That’s alright, I’d nearly forgotten,” she smiled, all her fretting having flown away. “Dwalin was telling me about his dreadful uncle.”

A look of surprise came over Thorin’s face, but it was a pleased kind of surprised and not that kind that came about when he walked into a conversation that he’d rather not partake in. “Was he? Good. There’s a dwarf for whom the bards ought to be composing epics.”

“Aye, and he’d agree with you,” Dwalin nodded. “According to my uncle, he was the only reason the Mountain stayed pointed skyward. He and he alone, mind, first of all the Dwarves under the earth. Nevermind the Guard.”

“The Guard?” Thorin asked, as if he’d never heard the word before. “Nay, what’ve they ever done for him?”

“Ruined more books than any other group under the Mountain save the Healers!” Dwalin thundered, smacking his fist into his open palm. “For shame!”

“Was he a frightening sort?” Dís asked, equally amused and alarmed. 

“Well, he was all of four and a half feet tall - round about Balin’s height,” Thorin recalled. “But only half as thickly Made.”

“I don’t think I ever saw him helt a sword or an axe or a bow upon the tourney grounds,” Dwalin added. 

“Everyone was terrified of him,” Thorin concluded. “As well they ought to have been. But anyhow, that’s enough chatter - we’re in luck it’s too late for that miner to come round.”

The rest of the day was spent in cheerful work - after a brief mention by Dwalin that they had already been graced with a visit from the aforementioned miner and Thorin was fortunate to have missed him if he wanted to avoid more pointless talk. 

It didn’t quite go far enough to convince Dís that she ought to risk her brother’s levity by pestering him with questions about other dwarves he’d known that she was curious about, but she thought she might take Dwalin up on his offer to talk in the future. If it produced such results as these, perhaps she had been too overcautious. Perhaps she should have asked more questions years ago.


	7. Chapter 7

“What’re you getting Thorin?” Bofur asked Víli. He lay sprawled upon his cousin’s bed, stroking his beard in idle contemplation. When Víli first announced his decision to break the lease on his family’s apartment, Bofur had been quite heartbroken. Despite the loss of his uncle and his auntie and Víli’s elder brother, it felt like the end of an era to him, the final door shut on his good childhood memories. Bofur had spent just as much time at his cousins’ home as he had at his own when he was little, his mother and her sister being the best of friends. 

But he’d quite forgotten his initial upset; actually, he found he didn’t mind the queer wood-framed house, for all he privately thought that his cousin was lucky the walls hadn’t fallen round his ears yet.

“Best present there is - the gift of song!” Víli crowed triumphantly. He was restringing his gittern special for the occasion and had asked Bofur to stand him for a few pennies for gut strings; he’d pay him back sooner or later. “Same as for Thyra. Aren’t you doing the same? Don’t tell me I’ll be all on me own!”

“Ah, you’d love it,” Bofur said, reaching out and tugging Víli’s hair playfully. “No one else to bask in all that attention. No one else to keep pace with - ”

“Ey now, I keep up!” Víli protested indignantly. “We’ll have to have a proper duel, you and I, that’d liven the evening up for sure.”

“Don’t you remember?” Bofur asked, flipping over onto his stomach. “No liveliness, them’s the rules.”

Bofur pronounced the word ‘liveliness’ with the same dour expression most dwarves used for the word ‘taxes.’

“You got a fine waxy buildup in them ears o’yours,” Víli remarked. “I didn’t here that there wasn’t to be no fun. I heard that there wasn’t to be no strangers and that’s a different sort o’thing altogether. I don’t think Thorin minds a wee bit o’fun, I think he’s shy is all.”

“You’ve been talking to my Ama!”

At the sound of that unexpected exclaimation, Bofur shrieked and leaped right off the bed, crashing to the floor in a heap.

From beneath the rumpled bedclothes, hanging down to the floor, crawled Nori, looking dusty and mussed. It appeared that he’d spent the whole day under Víli’s bed for he blinked as if the light hurt his eyes and shook dust from his hair as he emerged. 

After a round of loud swearing, Bofur eventually got round to asking, “What’re you _doing_ there?”

“Listening,” Nori announced as if it was the most ordinary thing in the world to sit still and silent under the bed of another until the fancy struck one to shout and frighten their lodger’s visitors. “And hiding. I don’t want to do laundry.”

Víli, who had been studiously working throughout the previous conversation, lay his gittern aside. Fixing Nori with an annoyed look, he frowned tremendously at him and asked, “You wear clothes on them auld bones o’yours?”

“What?” Nori asked, fidgeting a little 

“Go on,” Víli prompted, expression wavering not a jot. “Simple answer to a simple question.”

Bofur wasn’t quite sure where his cousin was going with all this inquiry, but he did his best to follow along, folding his arms and matching frown-for-frown.

Nori admitted that he did, in fact, wear clothes. He tried to glare back at the cousins, but only succeeded in twisting his mouth a little into an uncertain expression.

Víli shook his head grimly and replied, “Then the washing’s partly your business, I’d say. For in me getting up this morning, I seen your Ma carting the washing tub and a sack o’togs that I reckon was as much yours as it was hers and Dori’s.”

Nori didn’t say anything, but his mouth twisted a bit more and his hands took up a twiddling, first clasped before him, then behind his back. Víli went on, “I’d be right shamed, if I was you, thinking on all that work what she does for you. And there you are, a lad as can’t be arsed to do a day’s washing. Why, I bet if you’d gone down the river along of her, she’d be back by now. As it is, I don’t reckon on seeing her ‘til it’s time for supper. Which she’ll be making. Won’t she?”

Nori dropped his eyes and puffed his cheeks out, seeming to draw air for a heated rebuttal...which never came. Funny how he always had hot words aplenty when Dori got on nagging him to do this or that little chore.

It was just Víli’s way of putting things. Had to be. For Nori almost - _almost_ managed to look guilty after Víli started in on him. If Dori’d been the one to catch him, words like ‘ingrate,’ and phrases such as, ‘after all we’ve done for you!’ would have been thrown about in so shrill a tone that Nori would’ve stopped listening almost before his brother opened his mouth. 

Víli never got blustery, never stuck a finger in Nori’s face, nor grasped him by the shoulders to give him a shake. Just said that he thought it was a, ‘crying shame,’ or ‘not a good showing,’ when he nicked something. Or skived off work. Or set Dori off on a rant because of his disobedience or teasing. Could be the lack of bluster made him easier to hear. Or it could be something else, something Nori couldn’t quite put his finger on.

Certainly he’d never known a dwarf of so bold or straight-forward a manner that he’d have the backbone to chide someone whose mother he was indebted to for board. But Víli seemed to take it as a given that he’d just as much right as anyone to needle Nori for being an arse. Prior to that, he’d only ever taken it to heart when Dís got on his back about behaving better. 

“Well, it’s too late for me to go ‘down the river’,” Nori said, in a mocking approximation of Víli’s brogue, straightening up in a valiant attempt to look uncowed. “She’s nearly done, as you said.”

“Aye, just so,” Víli nodded, still giving Nori a guilty-making look that set him to squirming again. Briefly, Nori flickered his eyes up to Bofur, seeking aid, but the other Broadbeam’s face was just as still and serious. In fact, he’d raised his eyebrows as if he couldn’t quite understand what Nori had done, as if he’d never once in his life done a runner on his chores. “How’re you going to make it up to her?”

“Uhhhhhhhhhhh,” Nori made a noise that wasn’t an answer. “Tell her I’m sorry?”

“There’s a start,” Bofur said, tapping a foot impatiently on the floor. “Then?”

“Ugggghhhhhhh.” This time the noise was more readily identified as a groan. “Do the washing when she asks next.”

“That’s no more than you ought to do,” Víli said, laying his strong hands on Nori’s narrow shoulders. “Making _up’s_ different. Supper might be a good way to start.”

“Supper!” Nori cried, horrified. He tried to duck away from Víli, but for all his sweet nature and gentle ways, he had a grip of iron. “I can’t cook!”

“What, big lad like you, coming hard on sixty?” Víli laughed, shoving him toward the door. “S’time you learned, isn’t it?”

And that was how Nori found himself marched into the kitchen while Bofur rooted through the pantry, finding the makings of supper and Víli stood watch over him. 

“What if it’s rotten?” Nori asked sullenly, certain that he’d make a muddle of it - the Longbeards of Erebor, though they had been in residence for only a few months, were already notorious for their lack of culinary ability.

“The trick’s to cook up food as always tastes good,” Bofur informed him over his shoulder. “Get yourself some sausages and spuds and a bit o’lard and half the work’s done for you.”

Nori was conscripted as a potato-scrubber and sausage slicer. The slicing was Víli’s idea for, in his words, “Makes a body feel better to serve up a spoonful as looks like a lot than a measly sausage as looks like nothing at all.”

More than once, Bofur slapped Nori’s hand when he reached for a spoon to turn the chunks of potato. “Don’t go peeking, now! They won’t brown up so good and they’ll taste all o’fat.”

“Not that’d I object to that,” Víli winked. “Still, crispy’s a better mouthful than greasy, eh?”

“Of _course_ they’ll be greasy,” Nori groused, rubbing his knuckles as if they actually pained him. “They’re sitting in fat!”

Bofur only shook his head, closing his eyes like an ancient statue of a scholar. “Nah. Trust me.”

“I trust you about as far as I can throw you,” Nori retorted, folding his arms, staring at the skillet, certain that all the supper would be burned.

But, miraculously, they were not. And they...well, they looked and smelled not only palatable, but actually _good_. The addition of an onion and a turnip that was on the verge of going soft padded out the supper until, still sizzling, Víli dropped it upon the table and declared their efforts a triumph. 

And not a moment too soon, for the latch on the door opened and Irpa arrived, bearing a bundle of laundry upon her back and a pleased expression on her face. “Dori? When did you learn to - oh! _Oh!_ And what have I done to deserve the pleasure, Bofur?”

“We gave young Nori a lesson in cookery, missus,” he proclaimed proudly. Then jabbed Nori hard in the back.

“Ow!” He exclaimed, then turned sheepishly back to his mother. “Er. Aye. Ugh. Ama. Sorry ‘bout the laundry. Hope this helps make up for it.”

To Nori’s abject horror, his mother’s eyes filled with tears and she dropped her bundle on the floor at once, hurrying toward them with open arms - but fortunately, _he_ was not the object of her embrace, rather she leapt upon Víli and Bofur with such force that their heads knocked together. 

“Oh, what lovely lads you are!” she crowed. “I knew renting out that room would be a boon! And you’ll stay for supper, Bofur, of course!”

“Aye, ma’am,” he said a little woozily. “I surely shall.”

Even Dori was not put out by their efforts, though his praise was less effusive than his mother’s, “Well, serves you right,” was all he sniffed at Nori. Though he finished the plate he was offered. And went back for seconds.


	8. Chapter 8

Against all odds, Thorin was beginning to enjoy the little hullabaloo surrounding his Name Day. Oh, aye, he’d much prefer a few well-wishes and a pat on the back to the presents and the party(at least, that’s what he kept telling himself), but it was amusing to find himself seeing more than his fair share of visitors come round the forge. Many came armed with would-be-casual inquiries as to whether he was in need of any specialized tools for his work, or combs for his hair, or a new good-quality leather belt.

Of course, sometimes the inquiries were much more mysterious. Túfi, Thrya’s youngest brother, approached the forge one day, accompanied by his second-eldest sister and only asked, “What’s your favorite color?”

To which Thorin replied, “Blue.”

Túfi nodded contemplatively, then bid Thorin good day and hied back off for home.

“Lapis lazuli,” Dwalin predicted with a grin as he watched Túfi’s straw-yellow hair bob about in the wind as he skipped away, his sister catching his hand in hers so he didn’t scamper too far off. “He’ll venture all the way to South Harad to get it.”

“Oh, aye,” Thorin rolled his eyes. “Surely. Riding there all the way on an oliphaunt.”

“That lad’s got secrets, mark me,” Dwalin continued, wagging a finger for emphasis. “You might laugh, but I’ll wager Túfi’s an especially important dwarf round these rocks. Spymaster to the Broadbeam lords, I don’t doubt.”

“He is little enough that no one’d notice him in a crowd,” Dís agreed.

“Little enough that he’s liable to be stepped on as much as anything,” Thorin smiled. “Little enough he needs to be accompanied when he ventures round the village.”

“Myra?” Dís asked, trying hard not to smile. She made her eyes credulously wide and said, “Nah, you’re wrong - she’s not minding him, she’s his bodyguard.”

Then she and Dwalin burst into laughter as one, as if they were the wittiest, cleverest of dwarves. After a moment, Thorin laughed as well.

It was good, this wee bit of cheer. Felt good, anyhow, which he knew wasn’t the same as _being_ good...but, close enough for the moment, eh?

Thorin felt lighter in his heart than he had in a while, since they’d settled. To be sure, things weren’t built upon solid rock yet, there was the continual threat that they might be ousted if his people proved to be more trouble than they were worth. But everyone was housed, at last. Nearly everyone was employed in some way, though most found positions far below their skill level. 

It rankled, still, to have come across the world with some of the finest hands and minds of a kingdom and to see them reduced to taking in laundry and turning to chimney sweeps to make ends meet. His own sister had been reduced to such, but in a perverse way, that did not trouble him overmuch; it would have troubled him far more to ask his people to do that which the royal family could not bring themselves to suffer.

He’d learned that from his grandfather, who would be the first to lower his charges for services, the first to offer himself as a breaker of rocks or a hauler of carts if circumstances required it. And Thrór loved a bit of diversion. He never hushed anyone who sang round a fireside during the evenings, nor chided anyone for taking their meager earnings to a pub for a pint. If it did themselves nor anyone else a harm, why should Thrór dictate amusement? Once the Mountain fell, he rarely sought out amusements for himself, but he’d not deny his people a drop of happiness when available. Nor, Thorin supposed, would he deny the same to his grandson. Even if that grandson bore the title of King Under the Mountain. 

His _father_ , on the other hand...but he was gone, for now. No one among their people had seen or heard from Thráin in five years. And while Thorin might hear his father’s voice from time to time, scolding him for this or that failure, infraction, or indiscretion, it was only an echo, after all. Nothing more.

“Túfi’s a good lad,” Thorin commented idly. “They’re all good, that lot, especially the little ones.”

“Glad you think so,” Dwalin replied approvingly. “For they’re half the party guests.”

“Not a bad guest list, that,” Thorin said, stroking his chin in evident pleasure. “For it’ll be an early night.”

“Ha!” Dwalin exclaimed. “You underestimate ‘em - Broadbeams _all_ , recall, and they’re in training. They’ll outlast us all, mark me.”

“In training?” Thorin asked, quirking an eyebrow as if he hadn’t any idea what notion Dwalin was chasing. “For what?”

“Parties,” Dwalin said firmly. “That’s the craft of choice around here, I fancy. Grog, food, and parties.”

“Well, that’s not so bad a craft,” Thorin observed. “I’d be rotten at it, but then, we’re all Made for something, aren’t we?”

“ _Are_ we, though?” Dís drawled mischievously. “Where does that leave Nori, then?”

“Made for trouble,” Dwalin concluded at once. “Takes all sorts, remember? If there wasn’t any trouble in the world, there’d be nothing to do all day.”

“So says our very own living legend,” Thorin teased him. “For a warrior born and bred, aye, a world without trouble is a world without fun.”

“I?” Dwalin asked, quirking a heavy brow. “And what’re you, then?”

“A smith,” Thorin replied simply, knocking a horse shoe into form. 

“Nah, you’ve got it the wrong end round,” Dís shook her head. “For Dwalin told me he was born in a library, not a tourney-field.”

“Was he?” Thorin asked, turning to Dwalin, astonished. “The way I’d always heard it, you were _nearly_ born in the council halls, bless your poor amad.”

“ _Born_ to the library, not Made for the library,” Dwalin corrected Dís mildly. “And what’s that about my Ama?”

“You ought to have been more patient in coming,” Thorin said. Or so he’d heard. There was a time when all little dwarflings wondered about their coming into the world and Dwalin’s had been more than usually exciting. Thorin’s, by comparison, was said to be so commonplace that his mother yawned through the whole thing. Freya always begged to differ. 

Dwalin snorted, “Could hardly help it, could I? Anyway, she got through it alright. She was a tough lady, my Ama and don’t you forget it.”

“Toughness hadn’t a thing to do with it,” Thorin sniffed. “She had magic on her side, eh?”

Dwalin smiled at him and Thorin smiled back. Dís looked between the two of them, amused, but also feeling as though there was something she’d missed. Dwalin’s amad was a scribe, wasn’t she? Not a mystic. 

But before she could ask any more about it, they were greeted by Víli, on his usual morning rounds. Since his Longbeard neighbors had come into the village he made a point of stopping by on his way to work most mornings.   
Unfortunately, they being comparatively new, he still hadn’t gotten the knack of it - nor realized that, in order to take a stroll of a morning, he had to wake up earlier than was his wont in order not to be late for work. One would have thought Bofur, who worked the same shifts as his cousin, would have informed him of the fact, but timeliness was not his strong suit either and they _both_ came to the forge that day. 

“Good morrow!” they chorused as one. Looks-wise, they couldn’t have been more different; Víli, short and broad, Bofur taller and lankier, one fair and the other dark, but they seemed to be two dwarves with one brain between them, most days. 

“Good morrow,” Thorin and Dwalin replied, also as one. Dís rolled her eyes and bit back a smirk; it wasn’t only among Clan Broadbeam that the Maker tried his Hand at crafting two dwarves who shared one mind. 

“Have we got a tale for you!” Bofur exclaimed, tossing down his mattock and resting his elbows upon the stall counter, intending to stay for a good long visit. “We worked as fine a bit o’trickery as e’er you did see!”

“It weren’t trickery!” Víli exclaimed, flicking Bofur behind the ear. “T’was an honest change o’heart.”

“Oh, aye,” Bofur rolled his eyes openly. “And coal floats.”

“I’m not a dwarf as holds a grudge,” Víli said, pointedly directing his words in Dwalin and Thorin’s general direction. “But if I _were_ , I got to say, I’d have words for you two laddies as go about spreading such gossip like you do.”

Thorin and Dwalin’s heads snapped up at once. 

“What’s that?” Thorin asked, brow furrowing.

“Aye, you do, don’t go looking so innocent-like!” Víli declared, oblivious to the fact that the looks Thorin and Dwalin were throwing his way were not in the least innocent, but rather menacing. He’d never learned to fear them and had no cause to now. “Saying such things about young Nori as sets the whole town against him!”

Dwalin groaned just as Thorin replied, “I think that’s a _little_ bit of an exaggeration - ”

“He’s got sticky fingers,” Dís pointed out. It was a point that was difficult to argue, as evidenced by Víli hemming and hawing and tugging on his beard a few times in a fretful manner before he came up with a reply.

“Aye, well,” he said at last, seemingly settling the matter. “He’s got a wayward streak, I’ll admit, but me Mam always said, ‘Them has has bad things said against ‘em, are sure to take to doing bad to fulfill their reputation.’”

“When’d your Mam say all that?” Bofur asked, confused.

“Not in your hearing, so much,” Víli waved a hand dismissively. “But it’s a good piece o’talk, I think. And it’s not fair, to just gossip up a body’s bad parts all the time. You make a mistake once, it shouldn’t take to following you about all your days!”

“Nori’s made more than one mistake…” Dwalin trailed off meaningfully. True, most of his pranks and schemes were harmless enough, but when it came to _theft_ , the taking of one’s hard work without pay or promise, well, that was quite a different thing. Especially when one’s situation was as perilous as the survivors of Erebor. Little wonder they all kept such a close eye on Nori.

“Eh, a dwarfling’s got to make mistakes sometimes,” Víli countered. “I’m sure you got up to your own share o’trouble in your day. Or didn’t you? _Or_ won’t you say, as you want the wee miss to think on the pair o’you as perfect?”

“Well, naturally,” Thorin said, with a small smile playing about his mouth. “We’d never get her to fetch a pail of water otherwise.”

Dís reached up and patted her brother reassuringly on the head. “Oh, don’t worry, Thorin, even if I thought you were the worst dwarf who’d ever lived, I’d fetch for you. Out of pity, of course, but the fetching’d get done.”

Thorin nodded approvingly, but Víli looked between the two of them with a concerned look on his face - at least, the Longbeards assumed that was what Víli looked like when he was concerned, they weren’t any of them sure they’d seen him in that state before. 

“You Longbeards…” he started, but seemed to think it was a bad idea and shook his head. 

“We Longbeards what?” Dwalin pressed, eyes narrow. 

“Ooh, you stuck your foot in it this time,” Bofur moaned, pulling the ears of his hat down so that it fell over his eyes. “There’s work to be going to, eh?”

“No, I want to know what laddie here’s got to say for himself,” Dwalin insisted, folding his arms over his chest. “We Longbeards _what?_ ”

Víli opened his mouth once, then closed it. He repeated this action twice more before Dwalin made an impatient noise accompanied with a ‘get on with it,’ gesture. Beside him Thorin looked puzzled and Dís faintly alarmed. 

“Onlyyoudon’tspeaksokindlyonyourownasIthinkyoumight,” Víli said in a rush. “You’re...always seeing the dark, not the diamonds, eh? Or the ash, not the blaze. Or the bad and - ”

“I think we understand,” Dwalin said curtly. 

“I don’t think it’s a Longbeard quality,” Thorin said, his tone a little kinder than Dwalin’s. Sometimes, it was as though he was much more comfortable being criticized than complimented. “These two likely picked it up from me, I’ve always been a grump.”

“Aye, but you needn’t be,” Víli insisted. “Take young Nori, as I were saying. He’s a bright enough lad, to be sure, and he’s good a good heart in him, I think. Loves his Mam and his brother, though he troubles him. Aye, he does a bit of taking what’s not his, a bit of wriggling out o’work, a bit of running off now and again, but if you all go on about what a bad lad he is, he might just turn out that way. Seems a sore shame to me, is all I’m saying. And while I’m saying - ”

“You run your gob, you lose your tongue,” Bofur reminded him, apparently parroting another of the wise old sayings of their grandmothers’. 

“Well, Dwalin said he wanted to know, so I’m telling,” Víli waved off his concern. “Look, it’s just...well, if you only look to the bad so’s you never see the good, that’s no way to go about, eh? I’m not saying there’s not...that all’s well all the time, I’m not _daft_ , only I think there’s more good about than you reckon. And you ought to look for it. Is all I’m saying.”

Dwalin and Thorin just stared at Víli, in contrast to Dís who stared down at her shoes. The two of them always were more stoic during a scolding than she. Though this was by far the gentlest scolding any of them had experienced, it still stung to think Víli thought badly of her. She rather feared she was going to cry and longed to run off and do it in private.

But then Víli cleared his throat and says, “I just likes you all and don’t want you to come over gloomy all the time - anyhow, that’s me off to work - ”

“Finally!” Bofur exclaimed, dragging his cousin up the road by his arm. “And I’ll say I’m sore sorry on me cousin’s behalf - come _along_ afore Dwalin and Thorin get in in their heads to knock _yours_ off your shoulders!”

“Oh, for - they _asked_!” Víli exclaimed.

“Aye, they asked!” Bofur countered, digging his heels in as he inched Víli’s bulk further along up the road. “But that don’t mean as you got to spill every thought that’s ever been in your head all over ‘em. No way to go about it, says I, that’s no way!”

When they were gone, Dís spoke up apprehensively, “Does that mean they aren’t our friends anymore?”

Dwalin grunted and scrubbed his face with his hand, looking at her with a sorry sort of expression. Poor girl, to think that the first time her friends disagreed with her, it meant they’d washed their hands of her. But really, what sort of examples of friendship did she have to go on? Everyone she was friendly with, she was related to and they were stuck with each other. 

Thorin recovered his tongue first, “Nah, I don’t think so. Víli wasn’t even talking about you, lass, I think that was all meant for me.”

“You would,” Dwalin grunted. Then he shook his head. “I never know whether we’ve made acquaintances with the village idiot or the Mountain sage.”

“I wouldn’t like to preside over that case,” Thorin commented idly, keeping an eye on Dís who didn’t seem as though she believed his reassurances. He moved to his sister’s side and clasped a hand on her shoulder to get her attention. “So. We compliment young Nori more and stay in Víli’s favor. That’s what I heard.”

“Mmm,” Dís said quietly. Bofur and Víli had already disappeared into the hustle and bustle of the village proper, but she stared at the spot where they’d been. Were they too melancholy a group to be friends with? Had the long road wrung all the joy out of them? It was awfully hard to be happy when every moment cheer was accompanied by the dull dread of wondering when it would all be over.

In danger of being swallowed up by her melancholy thoughts, it was only Thorin’s poking her in the arm and advising her to get back to work that forced her to stop thinking of it.


	9. Chapter 9

_That don’t mean you’ve got to spill every thought that’s ever been in your head…_

That wee little remark of Bofur’s coated Víli’s brains like a fresh-tarred rope. Over and over he thought of it as he went about his work. Nearly caused a cart to over-turn he was so preoccupied and not minding about what he was doing. The foreman was likely glad to see the back of him when he got off his shift.

“Have I done a wrong?” Víli asked toward the end of the day, when he and his cousins were making their meandering way to the mouth of the pit where they spent their days digging out coal. 

“Aye, too many to count,” Bofur replied immediately, shaking the dust off his braids. 

“Be serious,” Víli said. Bombur muttered something too lowly for either of them to catch, though it sounded awfully like, ‘Fat chance.’ “I been thinking on what I said to them Longbeards and I think I came over too hard on ‘em. It’s been eating away at me brains all day.”

“Ooh, that’s no good,” Bofur shook his head sadly. “As you hasn’t all that many brains to get started with.”

Víli’s mouth twisted up into a near-frown; it wasn’t that he was _annoyed_ with Bofur - after all, his cousin likely had the right of it - it was only that Bofur wasn’t a body one could go to for serious contemplation. Bofur was unused to being sought after for advice or leaned on in times of strife. Used to be Víli never had cause to treat Bofur as anything other than a partner in crime and mischief, a fellow rabble-rouser and not someone to seek out when he thought he might need a spot of wisdom to round out his thinking, but...well. Times changed. Folks had to keep up with it. 

Bofur squirmed for a moment, then squared his shoulders, twirling his mattock to release his nervous energy. “I dunno,” he said finally, his let’s-be-serious dance done. “I reckon you wasn’t too stern with ‘em, but I got it in me head that them Longbeards’re sensitive sorts, you know? ‘Member when they was first come and Thorin reckoned as every dwarf who looked twice at him wanted to fight him?”

Indeed, Víli did remember and, rather embarrassingly, had laughed out loud when he heard that Thorin thought he and his kin would want to have it out with their fists over Bifur being injured in the wars. It just seemed absurd at the time, that they would blame one dwarf - not even a commander, at that - for a war fought by all their kind for an injury dealt by an enemy. Surely, if Víli ever met the orc who had cleaved Bifur’s head, he’d seek swift and just revenge, but what good would it do to break Thorin’s nose over it? Well, other than make him a wee bit handsomer for Víli wasn’t so good-natured that he couldn’t see Thorin had a face only his mam likely called well-Made.

Then again, maybe she wouldn’t. He wasn’t _wrong_ when he said that Longbeards only saw the bad in each other. He was just thinking that maybe he’d been a bit too forthcoming to tell them such. 

Not everyone liked having their faults thrown up in their faces. Never much fussed Víli for he was well aware of them - orcs aside, he wasn’t much of a fighter, he was not whole-heartedly devoted to his craft, he was bad with money, ran his mouth more than was good for him...aye, that was a fair list and if he was a writing dwarf he could’ve filled a scroll itemizing all of his failings. But other dwarves were, as Bofur said, sensitive. And giving a body a dressing-down out of nowhere wasn’t polite under the best of circumstances. 

His Mam mightn’t have understood - she always gave a pound of advice when a mere penny’s worth would have sufficed - but his Da likely wouldn’t have gone on so. Da was a fellow who was given to good conversation, but not gossip. And Kíli - ah, Kíli’d have told him to mind his own damn business. And not go giving folks rules to live by as hadn’t asked for it and didn’t need it. 

Thorin was a _King_ after all. Didn’t he have someone or other as was assigned to give him advice? Balin. Had to be Balin. Víli’d bet a penny on it for he always sounded very bright and just a wee bit cross, the sort of fellow folks’d naturally be inclined to listen to. But then, as Thorin was a King, did he _have_ to listen? Had he not only done them a disservice, but actually _insulted_ them? Oh, that was the last thing he’d ever want to do!

“Maybe I’ll take a wee ramble, see if I can catch ‘em afore day’s end,” Víli mused, frown deepening and brow creasing. “Tell ‘em it’s not that I think badly on ‘em, not at all. Wouldn’t want them thinking that.”

Bombur slowed his walk and looked at Víli in quiet surprise. “It’d be awfully good of you,” he said. 

“You weren’t there!” Bofur exclaimed. “What do you know of it?”

His brother shrugged. “I don’t know. Only I reckon as it’s best if Víli thinks he’s done ‘em an injury that he goes and makes it right.”

“Aye,” Víli nodded with a wan smile. “Best had - afore Thorin gets it in his head to fight me again.”

Really, it was Dís’s reaction that bothered him the most. Thorin and Dwalin were so stoical that it was sometimes hard to see what they were thinking. Dís, though, well, she looked troubled. Hurt, even. And he’d never want to see her hurt.

They were so like other folks it was hard to remember that they were _not._ Other folks, that was. Ordinary folk, like. Thorin a king and all. Not that Víli was much acquainted with kings, but when he thought on the subject (which was infrequent, to be sure), he imagined kings were sort of...different. Older, definitely, grey-bearded and grave. Not that Thorin wasn’t the gravest-face dwarf he’d ever seen, but he was young and so it wasn’t like he was _grave_ as such. More grumpy. Not the kind of fellow you’d take for sitting on a throne handing down judgments from on high.

As to the matter of princesses like Dís and probable lords like Dwalin...well, he’d even less an idea of what they were meant to be like. Princesses, he was sure, were meant to be either highly skilled in battle or craft or both, but Dís (bless her hands and all) was but a lass and so skilled in nothing in particular but sweetness. Dwalin, aye, he was a proper hero sure enough, but you’d not know that ‘less you heard his name. Took about as much care with his hair and beard as the rest of the family and Víli was sure he wore the same auld shirt three days together, same as anyone. 

Perhaps he ought to sharpen up. It was times like this he wanted his Mam about most of all. She was no high-born dwarf (ha!), but she was wise and knew how to treat others, didn’t matter who they were.

Oh, sure, if you asked her opinion on a matter she’d give it, and _how_ , but she knew when to stop before giving insult or issuing orders. And if she found herself on the threshold of going too far, then there’d be Da, set to clear his throat or give her a twitch of his brows as meant, _Still that tongue there, Varla, else it’ll get you in trouble._

But usually, he didn’t have to. Usually folks sought her out special, just ‘cos she could take the measure of a body or a situation as wanted sorting and only had to take a moment to juggle it round in her mind before she said what she thought. And usually what she thought was right. 

Well, Víli didn’t know if what he thought was right at all, most of the time. But at least he could run over to the forge and give them a proper apology. 

To his great disappointment, only Dwalin was about. 

“You just missed Dís,” he informed him. “She and Thorin buggered off to the market to find a fair-priced joint of meat to tempt their mother. She hasn’t been eating much.”

“Oh,” Víli said, a bit deflated. “Sore sorry to hear that. I only come round to apologize, it can wait ‘til the morning. I could tell it you now, though, ‘less you don’t like to hear the same auld song twice.”

“Save it,” Dwalin said shortly. He’d been scrubbing away at the anvil, dusting off the metal shavings that were a product of the day’s work. His hands were black and he left sooty smears on his brow as he wiped away the sweat. “I don’t need an apology - nor does Thorin, though Dís’ll be relieved to hear you don’t hate her and never want to see her again.”

“WHAT?!” Víli exclaimed, horrified. “Oh, the poor lass! I never cut no one out like that and certainly not for...for nothing! I thought I might’ve been a bit overhard, but I never reckoned as she’d take it so hard!”

“Well, she did,” Dwalin shrugged. “For a minute or two. Eh, you were probably right about all of it. I just don’t care.”

“Aye, but that’s what I come to say,” Víli explained, placing the palms of his hands flat on the countertop - the countertop that was previously spotless and now was besmirched with fingerprints. “I come to say it weren’t me place to start in on you so rough - ”

“Nah,” Dwalin shook his head, not minding about the marks. “You don’t understand - you’re probably right. We’re probably harsh, whether it’s over young Nori or the price of flint or some other damn thing, but I don’t care. I don’t care that we’re complainers and I don’t care what you think of it.”

He’d said it all so simply and so straight-forwardly that Víli wasn’t sure what to think. He’d been hoping for rushlight anger - quick to flare and disappear again - or (a tiny, prideful part of his heart) hoped that the Longbeards would said he’d opened their eyes to a new way of thinking and they’d be cheerful from here out. But he hadn’t been expecting apathy. Probably because Víli cared so much himself, it never occurred to him that there might be others who didn’t worry about others’ opinions of them.

“Oh,” Víli said, uncertainly. Belatedly, he realised he was making more work for Dwalin and removed his hands from the counter. “Right, then.”

“Listen,” Dwalin said, approaching and staring down at Víli from his great height. “You can blather on about seeing the good or what have you all you like. Talk my ear off about it, it doesn’t do me any harm. But come day’s end, I won’t care about it. There’s...maybe five dwarves whose good opinion I care about. And you’re not one of them.”

Fair enough, Víli supposed and said so. Then, out of sheer curiosity he asked, “Who are they?”

Dwalin held up a hand, “Dís, my Auntie Maeva and Uncle Gróin, Balin, and Thorin. That’s it. And it’s not a list that’s likely to expand. I like you well enough, understand, I just can’t be arsed to fret over whether you like me, nevermind whether you approve of me or how I talk or who I talk about. Doesn’t trouble, isn’t likely to. And that’s that.”

Víli nodded, then smiled and said, “That takes a boulder off me shoulders o’worry, then. But I ought to make amends with Dís. And - ah, I reckon as you’d know! - is there some soul about what gives Thorin advice? A Lord o’Chattering On, or suchlike? Only I don’t mean to offend his...er...honor. Or what have you.”

Dwalin actually laughed, “Ah, no. There’s not. But believe me when I say that you don’t need to tell Thorin all his faults - he knows them well enough and more and...hmm. You know how some folks do sums? To fall asleep? Or count coins?”

Víli, who hardly ever had trouble sleeping (and when he did, found that a bottle of whiskey was a better remedy than counting anything), just shrugged.

“Well, Thorin makes a list of every bad thing that’s happened, is happening, or is likely to happen that he can think of and that’s what goes through his mind when he’s in bed,” Dwalin said.

Víli grimaced. “How’s his sleeping?”

“Terrible,” Dwalin replied. 

So, Dwalin didn’t care what Víli thought, any criticism Víli leveled was only one among _many_ awful things that filled up Thorin’s sleepless nights and...well, that still left poor Dís who thought he wanted to be rid of her. 

“And…” Víli prompted, looking at Dwalin encouragingly. He’d been so unexpectedly talkative this evening, that he was eager for him to go on, tell him how to proceed. But Dwalin just looked at him in a piercing way that actually put him more in mind of Balin, though he’d previously spied no resemblance between them. “Er. Dís. What’s she think?”

“She’s never had a friend who wasn’t also a cousin,” Dwalin said after a long pause. “So be careful with her.”

Víli snapped his fingers. “I’ll bring her a sweet! A peace offering, say. So she knows I think fond on her still, but I won’t go on and on about what all I said so she’s not got to think on all that. Ooh, that reminds me - while I’m bending your ear, can you answer a question?”

“Sure,” Dwalin said, eyes dropping to the dirty counter. “Since I’ll be here cleaning anyway.”

“Ah, sorry about that,” Víli said, then brightened and added, “Got me apology in! Anyhow, what me and Bofur was discussing afore we had words with young Nori was what sort o’thing Thorin’d like for his Name Day. We can’t afford boots, and I figure he don’t need no knives, but Bofur and I played fair for Thyra’s party and we thought o’doing the same for Thorin. He got any favorite airs we ought to learn? Pipe and gittern only, I’m afeared, for we don’t know how to play on more than that!”

Dwalin looked contemplative, “Eh, keep it a bit quieter than the jigging at Thyra’s party. This likely won’t come as a great shock, but he likes a ballad - there’s one he’s awfully fond of, but I don’t think you’d know it. He learnt it from a Man in the East, something about Ballinderry - don’t ask me to sing it, I can’t carry a tune.”

“I’ll find it out!” Víli declared. “Oh, I just got to journey down to a Mannish pub with a bit o’coin to spend on a pint or two, that’s how I come by most o’the strange little ditties I know. There’s folk as come to this village from far off ranges, even over the sea! When Bofur and I was young, we got it in our heads we’d sail!”

“Did you now?” Dwalin asked, evidently a little amused. 

“Aye, so, we did!” Víli laughed. “Actually, we wasn’t so young! Now, I never seen the sea, no more nor he has, but we got it in our heads as we’d like it. For nighttimes I heard it’s as deep and dark as the most ancient mineshaft.”

“Only filled with water,” Dwalin pointed out. “And you’re not likely to find any mithril in it.”

Víli waved such logic off impatiently. “Ah now, you sound like me - ah. Hmm. Nevermind just who it is you sound like, but the stories them Men tell...you got plans this evening, by chance? For I got a few coins to spend on beer - not that I _should_ , mind, but Missus Irpa’s forgiving if I’m a few days late with the rent. But we could see if we couldn’t hear that wee song o’Thorin’s down the pubs. And there’s usually a game o’dice, or cards, or - ”

“Alright,” Dwalin said, whether because he truly wanted to go or because he truly wanted Víli to stop chattering was unclear. “And I’ll pay. That’s just what I need, you coming late with the rent, and Irpa getting upset and Dori getting upset and Nori - ah, but you don’t like to hear me speak ill of Nori.”

“It’s true,” Víli admitted, then favored Dwalin with a brilliant smile. “But you don’t care.”

Dwalin smiled back. “Too right. I don’t. Help me get the awning down.”


	10. Chapter 10

Like clockwork, Víli came round the forge just as the sun was creeping up over the horizon, this time with a treat in hand - sweetbread, rolled with apples and spices, sticky from boiled honey oozing out over the wax paper.

“For you, lass!” Víli said, presenting it to Dís with a flourish. “Though I s’pose you could share with them kinsmen o’yours, if you’re of a mind to.”

Dís looked from the present, to Víli, back to the present and only <i>briefly</i> eyed Thorin for some sign of disapproval before she took it. “Thanks,” she said. “What’s that for?”

“For me big mouth,” Víli smiled at her. “For me talking your ears off, like a wind-up toy what’s gears won’t stop a-churning. It’s a thanks, really, a gift for neither you nor that brother o’yours clobbering me about the jaws to get ‘em to stop flapping.”

“Naught for me?” Thorin asked in mock-outrage (which tended to look like true outrage, to the uninitiated). “I’ve listened to just as much of your yammering and I’ve kept my hands to myself all the while.”

Víli grinned. “Ah, now you’ll make be feel guilty - though, if I tell you true, it’s because such a gift is more fitting to your sister than you. Her being more sweet-faced than yourself.”

Thorin could not contradict such a statement, so he only smiled and inclined his head, graciously accepting defeat.

He was becoming adept at graciously accepting many things, including a not-too subtle invitation from Missus Sayra the next time he happened by the bake shop to be at her home a week hence, but not to bother <i>too</i> much about minding the time he arrived.

“They’ve got the whole family in on it, eh?” he asked ruefully as she packaged up his breakfast.

“Oh, aye,” she grinned up at him, keeping hold of the parcel a beat longer than was strictly necessary. “And why not? A century merits a celebration and you, laddie, make a very good impression.”

Thorin was sure he shattered whatever good impression he might have made by going very red about the ears and neck and muttering his thanks awkwardly.

<i>That</i> was the sort of thing that crept under his skin like nothing in the world. Folks being put out on his account and not even allowing him to tell them he was sorry for it. It was damnably inconvenient for him; apologizing was the easiest way to let another know he was grateful for things they’d done.

The last time this much fuss had been made over the matter of his turning a certain age had been fifty years in the past; there hadn’t been much time or chance of celebration for his seventy-fifth and, at fifty, he’d been more interested in stuffing himself full of sweets and begging sips of mead off his parents than he had been in going round and thanking his grandfather for the trouble he’d taken to give him a special day.

The memories were dim round the edges, but Thorin remembered the highlights including being allowed on horseback - <i>horse</i>back, mind - all by himself (under Umad’s watchful eye, of course). That had been an absolute thrill, above and beyond the rest of the presents he was sure he’d been given, sharp silver pen nibs, gilded blades, books, always books. Funny how he remembered the horseback riding, but not a single gift distinguished itself in his mind.

One commonly held thought about dwarves was that while they gave gifts of exceptional value, there was always some slyness on their part, some expectation of repayment. Newborn children of Men were a common form of payment in many tales.

It was a reputation that served them ill on the road, made Men overcautious of having dealings with them, as if the refugees of Erebor would remember the names of some cobbler they’d sold hides to in a wretched little backwater across the Misty Mountains and come round when his wife was delivered of a babe to...well, Thorin hadn’t the faintest idea <i>what</i> they would do with an infant.

<i>Eat them, of course!</i> Frerin once suggested wickedly. <i>Spice up their wee little bones with mustard and jam, then gobble them up!</i>

He’d gotten quite an earful from their mother for that speculation for not only was it a disgusting notion, the joke was in <i>terrible</i> taste and not even very clever.

Gift-giving was, naturally, a serious business. To any upon whom the work of one’s own hands was freely given for no stronger compulsion than to do another honor on personal merit, a like present was expected to be bestowed for similar reasons. Thorin expected he would keep a register of those who gave him a gift, noting it’s relative value and then, when their Name Day was celebrated, he would return the honor they’d done him. Very simple, respectful, and no seizing of babies involved.

The most difficult repayment by <i>far</i> would be hospitably opening his home to Alfi and Sayra as they were doing for him, but he would cross that road when he came to it; his mother had scarcely acknowledged his presence in weeks, let alone his Name Day and how it ought to be celebrated.

Thorin was absolutely certain that he’d get much more than an earful from Freya if she found out strangers were not only hosting a party for her eldest son, but that he - and by extension, <i>she</i> would be expected to open her home to them out of good will and reciprocity. So he didn’t say a word. And, though he hadn’t counseled her about it either way, neither did Dís.

There was another significant point - <i>she</i> was awfully excited about the entire to-do and he couldn’t bring himself to dampen that excitement by reminding her that their mother was low in spirits (as if she needed reminding) or that <i>he</i> felt a sliver of guilt creeping into his conscience like a splinter when he reflected that cake and presents were hardly a fitting tribute to the king of an exiled kingdom.

<i>What is it you’d like, Thorin? What’s special that you like to eat, Thorin? Is there anything you need, but haven’t got round to getting yet, Thorin?</i>

Pen nibs. Writing paper. An orange, if it could be got cheaply. As for what he really wanted? It was unattainable and would only make folk pity him if he carried on too long.

And anyway, he was touched by what they <i>were</i> doing for him, small as it was and mean as it seemed in comparison to what had been. It was more than he’d any right to respect and doubly so considering the fact that, of all the dwarves he suspected were in on the plot, fully half he hadn’t known above a year and of that number he could only recall speaking at length to...perhaps five of them.

And <i>that</i> was the crux of it, really. It wasn’t that Thorin conceived of himself as being inherently unlikeable in general, but he’d certainly never attracted hoards of friends. And those friends he did have certainly liked to tease him about being quiet, or grumpy, or just not a lot of fun.

<i>“Why have I got to talk?”</i> Thorin would respond to Frerin innumerable times. <i>“When you’re about, when have I got the chance?”</i>

<i>“You’re all the merriment this Mountain can stand,”</i> he’d inform Heidrek, not even half-joking. What could he be that he didn’t have friends or brothers or cousins about to supply for him?

But where once there’d been thousands, there were a few scattered hundred of their people now. And it wasn’t so easy to blend into the background when there wasn’t anyone else to stand before you.

So he tried to take it all in stride. Everyone else was tickled by the whole affair, so he supposed he ought to be too. No sense in letting them all down by not drumming up the appropriate level of enthusiasm - the gratitude he had in spades, but the <i>appearance</i> of gratitude was something he had to work on. Hervor’d even tried to coach him on it.

“Make sure you smile - no, not like that,” she tsked when the corner of his mouth curled up into a little smirk. “A proper smile. With teeth.”

They’d been cleaning out her father’s shop after a bit of butchering and there were smears of blood on Thorin’s cheeks. The toothy snarl he leveled at her would have done an Ironfist warrior proud.

Hervor responded by throwing a pig’s foot at his head. “You’re impossible - just smile and say thank-you and you’re going to be expected to hug and kiss everyone, so you’d best be ready for it - ”

“You’re acting as though I’ve never been to a party before,” Thorin interrupted her, having caught the projectile before it hit him in the face; there was still good meat on it, after all. “I’ll mind my manners.”

“But see that you don’t mind them so much that you forget them,” Hervor chided him. “I’ll expect to see you dancing, with the host and hostess <i>and</i> their kin. And your own kin too. I’ll not be forgotten.”

Thorin gave her a skeptical look; he was always his fair cousin’s last choice for a dancing partner and she well knew it.

“It’s because you don’t put your <i>back</i> into it,” she replied without him needing to say a word. “If I’m to be flung, I want to be <i>flung</i>, not just tossed about as if you’re fluffing a pillow! Dwalin’s a mighty dancer, try being more like him.”

“Dwalin’s a mighty everything,” Thorin laughed. “You might as well tell me to be more like a raging stream or an avalanche than to dance like Dwalin.”

Hervor rolled her eyes and sighed mightily, putting her hands on her hips. “Do you see? <i>This</i> is just the sort of thing that turns a wild night into a sober one, all this hemming and hawing and, ‘Oh, no, don’t talk to me, don’t look at me,’ nonsense. It’s as though you <i>want</i> folk to feel sorry for you and it won’t do, Thorin, it just won’t do.”

That had taken him aback, though fortunately, Hervor was such a talker that he didn’t need to ask her for clarification, she was only too happy to go on.

“You’re so <i>down</i> on yourself, it’s a bore,” she said. “I’m not going to spend your whole parting trying to talk you up, I’ve already got you a present - which, by the bye, is going to be the <i>best</i> present, so brace yourself.”

“Have you been talking to Víli?” he asked.

“The handsome miner?” she asked. “No, not a word - which reminds me, I <i>ought</i> to, if only to give myself something pleasant to look at. Why?”

“He was down the forge just the other day saying as much,” Thorin informed her. “Though he thought we were too hard on young Nori for his tastes.”

“No one can ever be too hard on Nori,” Hervor waved her hand as if banishing his whole family. “Someone’s got to bring him to task and the Maker knows his mother won’t. Anyhow, we’re not talking about Nori, we’re talking about you and how you’re not to ruin your own party.”

“As it is my party,” Thorin began in a thoughtful way, “if I want it ruined - ”

“Oh, Thorin,” she shook her head and curls sprang out of her kerchief she’d tied round her hair to keep it out of the muck, “it’s <i>not</i> only your party, it’s all of our party, the first spot of merriment amongst us for years and years. And as I’ve said once, twice, a thousand times and will keep saying until it penetrates the gravel in your head, you’re not allowed to ruin it. If I see you come trudging in with a frown, I’ll bar the door against you until you look more cheerful.”

With such encouragement as <i>that</i>, Thorin knew he really didn’t have much choice in the matter. It was only too bad they didn’t have a looking glass so he could practice smiling in a way that was more to his cousin’s liking.


	11. Chapter 11

_Up, up, brother!_

Frerin’s voice rang out like a gong sounded in an empty chamber. Thorin groaned and tried to shut out the noise with a pillow - it was his Name Day, after all, couldn’t a fellow sleep in as long as he liked?

 _Up! Up!_ Dís echoed, but at least her voice was like a pleasant chiming of bells. Less pleasant was the bouncing up and down on his bed, jostling him awake. Thorin assumed Frerin must have tossed her up, hoping she’d land _on_ him, rather than merely next to him.

 _Nothing for it, lad,_ his father said sympathetically. _Isn’t every day your young man turns fifty._

Then his mother, impatient in voice, but her hands were gentle on his head. There’s _a horse waiting for you - I think it’s a stupid, dangerous thing, but Umad will have her way and that’s all I’ll say about it - get up, Thorin, my love. Don’t keep everyone waiting._

Right, get up. Push aside the covers, blink in the candlelight - ach, but the light burning his eyelids was bright and streaming in from the kitchen. The kitchen? That was an entire level down.

“Thorin. _Thorin._ Thorin!”

Dís’s voice. Clearly now, and significantly more gong-like than it had been in his dreams. There was no feather pillow to muffle the sound, no down-stuffed mattress to burrow into like a mole going to ground, only a straw-stuffed pallet and a thin wool blanket that one of them really ought to launder.

Thorin blinked himself into wakefulness and found his sister standing over him with a smile and a whispered, “Joyous Name Day.  
  
The most joyful part of the morning came when the water in the basin turned out to be all liquid, not having a skin of ice over the top as the days turned colder. Thorin quickly scrubbed the back of his neck and under his arms (he did have a party to attend that night, after all). It wasn’t so very different from his fiftieth Name Day, half his lifetime ago, only the quick scrubbing he’d given himself then had been with hot water and a cake of soap, not cold water from a public pump and a scrap of flannel. He put on his sturdiest trousers, cleanest shirt, and kept a coat by, though he did not don it. He'd kept it hung on a peg just inside the door where it was least likely to get filthy from the work in the forge.

Thorin knocked on his mother’s chamber door and poked his head in to see if there was anything she wanted before he went out. She assigned him no tasks and did not acknowledge the day for what it was, but she’d made the effort to be up and dressed anyway, which Thorin appreciated. Nothing disturbed him more than to see Freya listless, subdued, hair unbound and coat draped over a chair, gathering dust. There was no way to know if she’d made the effort for his sake - he certainly couldn’t ask - but it made him feel less guilty to go out and leave her behind when she made to look as if she might venture forth on her own.

Dís was waiting for him by the door and she already dangled her pennies in front of his face the moment they were in sight of the bake shop.

“I’m paying,” she said in a final way that implied they’d already had an argument about it and she’d won. “Don’t you dare try to stop me - I’ve already told Thyra that your money’s no good there today and it’ll be embarrassing if you try to pay and you’re refused.”

“I’d hate for there to be a scene,” Thorin agreed and the two of them entered the shop, only to find that -

“Aha!” Alfi exclaimed, waggling his fingers at them. “Longbeard money’s no good here today! I’ve got me orders - and yours. Three bacon sandwiches, already packed and wrapped. One with jam, one with horseradish, one with extra bacon.”

Dís's determined expression fell. “I’d told Thyra I’d pay!”

It was up to Thorin to practice graciousness. Since his sister was still pouting by the door, he approached the counter, took the offered sack and thanked the baker for his generosity.

“You’re welcome lad, Joyous Name Day,” Alfi smiled at Thorin and shrugged helplessly at Dís. “I don’t doubt your word, lass, but I heard from me wife that if I take a ha’penny off you, I’d ne’er hear the end of it.”

“But you’re already hosting the party!” Dís exclaimed, then clapped her hands over her mouth and looked guilty. It would be impolite to carry on too much about another dwarf giving of the work of their own hands for free. Even a bacon sandwich, a little trifling thing, could become a point of major contention if she didn't give thanks properly. And besides, as much of an open secret as Thorin's celebration was, she promised herself she would at least attempt to pretend it was a surprise.

To spare her, Thorin feigned interest in inspecting the wrappings, as though he was worried about a few stray blots of grease ruining his already threadbare and stained tunic.

Alfi, good-hearted fellow that he was, didn't take her to task for rudeness. He just shook his head and replied, “As I said, s’not up to me, I do as I’m told. Now, away with you, afore them sandwiches get cold!”

Before his sister could say another word Thorin hooked his free arm through hers and dragged her backward out the door.

“Thanks very much, Mister Alfi!” he called over his shoulder, jostling Dís.

“Aye - thanks!” she called belatedly, wrenching herself from Thorin’s grip. “Though I _wanted_ to pay.”

“I know you did,” her brother smiled down at her. “And I thank you for the impulse, you’re also very generous.”

Dís looked up at him and smiled back, getting up on her toes to kiss his cheek. “You’re in high spirits and I’m glad for it.”

“I suppose I ought to be - I’m taking a leaf out of Alfi’s book,” Thorin informed her. “I’m going to do as I am told. And I was told I ought to smile and say ‘thank you,’ and look cheerful, no matter what happens.”

“And _enjoy_ yourself,” Dís insisted, squeezing his arm tight. “We don’t want you to look cheerful, we want you to feel cheerful. It’s your Name Day, after all.”

 _Not according to Hervor,_ Thorin thought to himself, but to say so would have violated some of the strictures she’d set down to govern his behavior on this day so Thorin only smiled again and said, “So it is.”

When they got to the forge, Dwalin enveloped Thorin in an enormous hug, lifted him off his feet and kissed both his cheeks. “Joyous Name Day!” he said when he put him down. “You’re finally as old as me. How’s it feel?”

Dwalin had asked him that very question every five year since he was old enough to pronounce all the words.

“Not so bad,” Thorin replied, rubbing his arms where they’d been squeezed and squinting up at Dwalin. “Though I think I’ve finally got to accept that I’ll never be taller than you.”

“Don’t say never!” Dís exclaimed before Dwalin could gloat. “For Dwalin might lose both legs at the knees in combat!”

“You can hope so, anyway,” Dwalin said, snatching their breakfast from Thorin’s hand and rummaging around its contents. “Ha! Good, just as I ordered.”

“You ordered!” Dís exclaimed, eyes wide. “But it was meant to be _my_ treat!”

Dwalin only smiled at her in a smug sort of way. “I decided to treat you both,” he said. “And as I rise earlier than you, I managed to get Missus Sayra’s ear and she was more than happy to comply.”

“It’s only ‘cos she thinks you’re handsome,” Dís glowered at him; she wasn't truly vexed, only a little put-out that she hadn't been able to spend her own money and a trifle annoyed that she'd spent even a moment worrying about how Mister Alfi might be offended that they wouldn't accept a gift when it turned out Dwalin had actually paid for himself.

“Cheer up, lass,” Thorin ordered her, tossing a sandwich her way. “I’m starting to feel picked-on; everyone thought I’d be the one to go about with a frown on my face today, but it’s you who needs to look a bit brighter.”

A jam-and-bacon sandwich turned out to be just the thing; for Dís said no more about not being able to spend her money on her elder brother and looked a good deal happier once she had some food in her stomach. It was a good thing they breakfasted when they did, for the shop was busier than ever that day. Many of their people came by the shop with wee little odd jobs; re-shoeing a pony, crafting a few nails or needles, fastening buckles to bridles and that sort of things.

Thorin could not help finding the timing suspicious and honestly, he was touched. The people knew their King and many did not remark upon the significance of the day whatsoever. They came with their work and their pennies and their smiles only and if some of them bid Thorin a _very_ good day, well, there mightn’t be anything at all in it, if he chose not to see it.

For his own sake and that of his subjects, he chose not to - he might become misty-eyed over it otherwise.

Despite the morning’s hustle and bustle, by mid-afternoon they were left well alone with plenty of time to stop by the village pump for a quick scrub before they ventured off to Mister Alfi and Missus Sayra’s - taking care not to arrive _too_ early, as they’d been instructed.

It was a working day for everyone, so none of the Longbeard dwarves felt compelled to dress in their best for the evening. Even Balin met them with ink under his fingernails and his tunic sleeves rolled to the elbows.

“Fancy meeting you here,” he said wryly. “Though I assumed all secrecy was gone by the wayside when I heard that this scheme was largely the responsibility of our Broadbeam neighbors.”

“Scheme?” Thorin asked blankly. “What scheme?”

Balin chuckled good-naturedly, “That’s the spirit, they’ll be thrilled to pieces, I’m sure.”

The two cousins approached the side door of the bakery ahead of Dís and Dwalin, the latter looking a little glum in the face of Balin’s teasing. Dwalin tapped her shoulder and leaned down to mutter, “It’s better by far that he knows, lass, for Thorin’s not fond of being surprised - can you imagine if he walked in, thinking he was doing Missus Sayra a particular favor and all of a sudden, there’s everyone he knows in the Ered Luin - and a few he doesn’t?”

Dís paused, then her mouth twisted in an involuntary smile. “He’d have our hides.”

“Aye, he would,” Dwalin agreed. “This is better. When you reach a century, I promise I’ll give you a surprise party.”

She grinned brilliantly up at him and hopped up to press a quick kiss to his cheek. Dwalin gave her a wink, then the door opened and Thyra rushed at Thorin, wrapping her arms around his waist, pinning his arms at his sides.

“Joyous Name Day!” she shouted, giving him a tight hug.

“Thanks,” Thorin said to the wall over her head.

Thyra drew back quickly, taking Thorin by the hand and giving him a tug toward the door, “There’s plenty more o’that to come, so best be prepared! We’re nearly done setting out the food and such, but me Ma said you’d best come up, no use waiting outside for your own fete!”

They’d scarely made their way to the bottom of the stairs when Túfi shot out of the apartment and held up a sheet of paper under Thorin’s nose. “Joyous Name Day!”

“Túfi!” Thyra scolded. “Now’s not the time for presents - let him in and all afore you start the gift-giving.”

The little lad looked crestfallen, but Thorin knelt down before him and held his hands out.

“Best give it to me now,” he said quietly, like they were sharing a secret. “Only I’m sure yours is the _best_ and we don’t want to make anyone feel badly, do we? When they see what a fine present you’ve wrought?”

That cheered Túfi up at once and he grinned a gap-toothed smile at Thorin and once more thrust his creation at him.

It, at first, seemed to be nothing but a blob of blue and seemed as though it had been dipped in Rohirrim blue on a laundry day, but Thorin saw it was a variety of shades and even textures - Túfi had evidently worked very hard on his picture, here drawing in waxes, there in chalks, there in paints.

“It’s your favorite color, you said,” he explained shyly. “So I thought you ought to have a lot of it. And Ama said it’s not likely you got wall hangings and such as make your lodgings cheery. So I done you one. You like it?”

Thorin put a hand over his heart and looked Túfi very seriously in the face. “It’s just about the nicest picture I’ve ever seen and I’ll hang it as soon as I’m able.”

Túfi’s face lit up and he hugged Thorin about the neck, very briefly, before rushing back in shouting, “Mam! MAM! He likes it! He says it’s the best picture in the whole world!”

“Aww, you’re sweet,” Thyra said as Thorin straightened up. 

“It’ll be the finest picture on our walls,” Dís observed, accurately.

“Puts the rest of us to shame,” Dwalin added. " To think of all the trouble I went to when I might as well have gotten myself a piece of wax and set it to paper."

Thorin grinned at them and carefully rolled the paper and tucked it under his arm, “It’s as I said, best to have the finest offering of the night given first - Hervor will be heartbroken to know that her present’s coming in second-best.”

The apartment that Alfi and Sayra lived in with their children was large, well-appointed and had clearly been in the family for generations. The walls were painted a warm ochre color, like a Stonefoot clay pot, and there was sturdy furniture, made of heavy oak pushed to the perimeter of the room, to make an impromtu dance floor in the center before the hearth. There was a marble-topped work table that had been cleared to make room for the spread of food coming down from the kitchen and the whole place had a yeasty, comfortable smell like someone had either just begun or just finished baking bread.

They were a trifle early, only Thyra’s family were home and so their Longbeard guests were assigned tasks to finalize the preparations - gathering a few stools from the bakery proper, running breads and meats down from where they’d just finished roasting in the ovens to make a very fine spread. Thorin was kept particularly busy such that he hardly noticed the apartment getting more and more crowded as his kin, starting with Hervor and her father Vigg, followed by Irpa and her two sons, and ending with his Auntie Maeva and her husband and sons came in with Víli, Bofur, Bombur and Bifur coming in last of all.

“Don’t this look a treat!” Bofur exclaimed over the food, but Thyra urged him away, linking an arm toward his and dragging him to a clearing in the middle of the sitting room.

“Not so fast, you!” she said. “For you got to _earn_ your bread and mead! Where’s your pipe?”

Bofur’s face fell so suddenly that Thyra was almost startled. He whipped round and asked Víli, “You didn’t happen to - ”

“Nah, I only got me own,” Víli said, holding up his gittern, shaking it slightly so Bofur could see that his pipe wasn’t somehow tucked inside. “Bombur _said_ grab it afore you forgot!”

“Did you?” Bofur asked his brother.

“Twice,” Bombur confirmed.

“Ehhh,” Bofur rubbed the back of his neck, looking regretful. “I could just double-back? Just toss the meat back on the fire and keep it hot…”

But just as everyone around the room started groaning and shouting that the meat would be _ruined_ Bifur approached his cousin and, seemingly from nowhere, produced his pipe with a quick flourish of his clever hands.

 _I listened,_ he signed, eyes twinkling merrily.

“Ah, Bifur!” Sayra sighed, monstrously relieved. “What’d we do without you?”

“There you are then,” Thyra nodded, giving Bofur an encouraging shove. “Play, then! We’ve all this food and everyone’s got to get hungry enough to eat it!”

“Ah, well, if it’s the food you’re worried about, you needn’t be,” Bofur reassured her. “For I’ve a mind to pack it in like - ”

But just _how_ Bofur was of a mind to eat his fill, the party would have to remain in ignorance of, for Víli struck up a tune of a misfortunate hod-carrier loud enough to drown out all of Bofur’s words and, after a moment of carrying on, Bofur put his pipe to his lips and joined in on the tune.

It was a crowded flat, to be sure, which did not make for terribly athletic dancing - close quarters necessitated tight flinging, but the stamping was enough to make the walls around the quake, so what they lacked for in flair the dancers made up for in enthusiasm.

Dís, naturally, insisted that she be the first to dance with her elder brother and Thorin obliged her. Hervor grabbed Dwalin’s arm before anyone else could think to ask him to partner with them and Irpa danced with Dori, until Óin cut in and stole her attention away from her son. Dori did not seem entirely put-out by this turn of events and hied himself off for refreshment in the meantime.

Alfi stole Dís for the next reel while his wife tried to coax Túfi off to sleep, which freed Thorin up to sit the next number out beside Dori and Bifur.

“You never cared for dancing, did you?” Dori asked Thorin in a way that implied he did not expect an answer. Bifur looked at him expectantly though and Thorin shrugged in reply.

“I don’t loathe it particularly,” Thorin answered. “Nor do I love it. But Dís does and I love to please her, so there you are.”

Bifur smiled indulgently at Dís. _Talented family_ he signed, nodding at her and Dwalin.

“Aye, they are,” Thorin acknowledged, eyes traveling to his Auntie Maeva as he tried to hide a smile. “Not all of us...ah, but then, she married in.”

The other two wisely did not comment on how Thorin’s Aunt, lovely and talented in the healing arts through she was, was a bit too light on her feet to excel at dance - one needed to be both sturdy _and_ firm as well as being on rhythm, which was why all dwarven dance halls were generally carved from granite. Anything softer would crack and there was more than one dwarven footprint in a wooden ballroom.

“She can’t sing either,” Glóin sneaked over, fidgeting only slightly as he looked Thorin over, searching for something. “Did you bring your pipe?”

“I don’t see how its any of your business whether I did or not,” Thorin replied. As a matter of fact he had, but he certainly wasn’t going to waste his stock of good tobacco on his wee cousin who was likely to cough the lot out as anything. “Why aren’t you dancing?”

“I might ask yourself the same question,” Glóin said insolently, staring at Thorin’s shirt pockets for a tell-tale mark that something was concealed within.

“Because I can do as I like at my own party,” Thorin said. “Dance with Nori, he hasn’t got a partner.”

Thorin might as well have told his cousin to shave his face and live as a Man. Glóin’s mouth drew up in disgust and he backed away from Thorin as though he was not only diseased, but extremely catching.

“Bombur, then,” Thorin suggested. That went over rather better and got Glóin out of his hair for ten minutes. It was easier, back in Erebor, to beg off dancing when one had an instrument. Thorin was a little shy of singing in public then, though much of his self-consciousness about his voice prowess had been lost on the road when they had nothing but singing to lift their spirits. But he knew he was a fair hand at the harp, he played well and applied himself to practicing. No telling now how the sound would be, should he ever take it up again. Though there’d been instruments available in the Iron Hills, he’d never had the heart to make use of them. Now, he’d nothing to apply himself to in order that he be ineligible for dancing.

It was only a trifle vexing however, for he was only obliging those he loved best in all the world. When his aunt approached him, he took her hands without hesitation, and bestowed the same courtesy to his Uncle Gróin and cousin Vigg. Then the meal was served, pasties and rolls and thick fat sausages dripping grease. There was even a mutton roast, sliced thick and studded with soft garlic that burst on the tongue sweetly.

Alfi had prepared a keg of his own home brew for the occasion and there was mead, scented with herbs. After another round of dancing, Thorin was permitted to take a seat and have his gifts brought round to him, everyone red-faced and jolly and hot enough to not mind a pause in the festivities.

“Us first!” Alfi insisted, making a sweeping gesture that encompassed the house, the food, and the guests. “There you are!”

Everyone laughed at his jest, even Thyra who ordinarily found her father’s sense of humor just a trifle silly.

“Thank you very much,” Thorin said earnestly. “I’m...flattered. Thanks.”

Sayra came forward, seized Thorin’s face with both hands and gave him two rough kisses on either cheek. “You’re welcome, a thousand times, me love!”

The flush that was already high on Thorin’s cheeks burned hotter and Sayra backed off, grinning in a satisfied manner. Bofur and Víli rushed forward, bowing together before Thorin as Víli launched into an explanation of his present, with all his natural showmanship.

“Now, we two agreed as we’d provide music to stamp along with for this wee gathering,” he said grandly. “Which we done with admirable - ”

“ _Admirable_ ,” Bofur echoed encouragingly.

“Aye, just as I says, ability,” Víli continued. “And we aim to do so ‘til your legs run away with you, but! I heard that you got some favorite airs as please you, so I trotted down a few pubs hoping to learn a tune or two - ”

“And hard work it was!” Bofur exclaimed. “Why, we drunk - how much did we drink, Víli m’lad? In pursuing this excellent goal?”

“Couldn’t tell you, couldn’t rightly say,” Víli shook his head regretfully. “But! I learned me a song and I hope it’s as sweet as you remember - sure sounded sweet to me and here you are!”

Bofur put his pipe to his lips and provided accompaniment as Víli sang. It was a sweet mournful tune that Thorin had heard years ago on the road and taken a shine to. Mannish song, he was fairly sure, but just because a song or a craft not of dwarven make, that did not mean it was not without value.

“ _’Tis pretty to be in Ballinderry_  
‘Tis pretty to be in Aghalee  
‘Tis prettier to be on bonny Ram’s Island  
A-sitting forever beneath a tree…”

Dís sidled up to where Thorin was sitting and put her arms around his neck, leaning her cheek against his head. He patted her arm and smiled up at her. Had she mentioned his partiality for this tune? It was a wonder they’d got the words down since he rarely sang up, far more often did he hum it to himself, quietly. Often when he thought there wasn’t anyone around.

 _”T’was pretty to be in Ballinderry_  
But now it’s sad as sad can be  
For the ship that sailed with Phelim, my diamond  
Is sunk forever beneath the sea.

Polite applause followed - it wasn’t the sort of song that ended on a bang or a clatter. Hervor could be heard to mutter under her breath, “Aye, and _that_ is sorrowful, no wonder Thorin’s so fond of it.”

Thyra narrowed her eyes and said, “Boats and such? Are you _sure_ you found that song for Thorin, or did you drink so much in the chasing down of it that you thought his tastes and your own was the same?”

“Nay, we have it on good authority - ” Víli began.

“The best!” Bofur interrupted, pointing his pipe in Dwalin’s direction.

“He does like it an awful lot,” Dís nodded, not so subtly nudging Thorin in the arm to agree with her.

“I do,” Thorin confirmed, rising up and reaching out to clasp Bofur and Víli’s hands. Aye, he could be closed-mouthed and testy and rather bullish when he was in a strop, but one thing that could be said about the King Under the Mountain was that he knew to mind his manners among his own people. “Thank you, it was a good rendition.”

Bofur bowed again and Víli’s face lit up in a grin, “Good to know I didn’t make a botch of it - but, if it’s sea-songs you like, why, we got hours and hours pack up in our heads, just waiting for a request or at - ”

“No!” All the Broadbeams in the room were of one voice - even Bifur who signed that they’d better not as vigorously as the rest all shouted.

The Longbeards said nothing on the matter, though Dís looked mightily intrigued and Gróin so discombobulated by the notion that he looked nearly disgusted. Who ever heard of any of their race - save the Northernmost Ironfists - going to sea?

“You’ve had your go,” Irpa said diplomatically, waving Víli and Bofur back from the center of the room. “Let’s give everyone else a chance - else we’ll be here all night and won’t have time to get back to dancing!”

Her present - given on behalf of herself and her sons - was a brand-new coat. That is to say, the coat itself was new, if one looked very carefully, it was evident that it had been recut, likely from a garment meant to be worn by a Man. But Irpa and Dori had so cleverly cut new seams in the back to accommodate Thorin’s broad shoulders that it was hardly noticeable.

“I thought you were getting me gloves!” he exclaimed, only his eyes betraying a trace of horror at the time and expense that must have gone in to crafting such a gift; he was far too polite to _refuse_ , of course, or insist that Irpa and her sons had gone out of their way, it would have been insulting.

“Well, you know,” Irpa explained airily, “I _was_ , but this gem just happened to catch my eye in the market and, well…”

“Your other coat is practically a rag, this is better,” Dori finished, not even trying for diplomacy. “You’re very welcome, by the bye.”

Thorin thanked them both - even young Nori, who only shrugged in response and muttered, “I was only there when she bought it.”

His aunt and uncle offered a bottle of orange-scented hair oil and _three_ whole oranges, which prompted exclamations from Alfi and Sayra asking who their supplier was and what their prices were.

“These were a lucky find,” Maeva said. “I thought I’d preserve them, but I knew they’d just be gobbled up as soon as Thorin set eyes on them, so why go to the trouble?”

In fact they _were_ devoured not long afterward, but not by Thorin. He offered slices round to everyone and gave Sayra and Alfi the skins because he knew they could make better use from them than he could; even before the last of them finished licking the juice from their lips, Sayra had bustled off to the kitchen to slice the rids up for sugaring.

Óin gifted him a new tunic (evidently Irpa wasn’t the only one to notice how worn his clothing was) and Glóin handed over the three pens he’d promised. That left Dís and Dwalin who appeared empty-handed.

“Ours couldn’t fit in the house,” Dwalin informed Thorin smugly.

“That so?” Thorin raised an eyebrow. “So what is it, then?”

“It’s the library!” Dís exclaimed, just as Dwalin opened his mouth, cutting him off before he could draw the revealing of their present out, to create greater anticipation. “We bought you a subscription! For the whole year, you can borrow whatever you’d like, so long as you bring it back ere long. Is that right?”

The latter she asked Dwalin; so excited had she been to tell her brother all about his present that she was not entirely sure she’d actually explained it all particularly accurately.

“Aye,” Dwalin nodded, ruffling her hair. “As she says. You’ve just got to show your face to the librarian, put your signature down, all that. If you don’t get on my bad side, I _might_ consider going in on another with you.”

“I’ll try to keep on your good side,” Thorin said, eyes wide with a mote of shock. Against his better judgment he ventured to ask, “How much - ”

“Ah! No, none of that!” Dwalin clapped a hand over his mouth and shook his head. “Just say, ‘Thank you, Dwalin,’ and have done with it.”

“Mmmgghphhgh,” Thorin mumbled into Dwalin’s palm, which apparently suited him just as well, for he released his hand and looked satisfied. Thorin opened his arms to Dís and she rushed forward, squeezing him tight round the middle. She didn’t really know what it meant to her brother, to have access to the interior of the range that way. Beyond the novels, newspapers, and books of general interest, there were legal texts he could access, things that would aid him in his understanding of their place in the West. Whatever it cost, _that_ was worth more than all the coal in the Ered Luin.

Balin handed over his book immediately after, “To get you started,” he said slyly. “Though this one’s yours to keep.”

Thorin thanked him nicely and finally only Vigg and Hervor were left, the latter grinning in triumph.

“Ha!” she clapped her hands once. “I knew it! I _knew_ I had the measure of you better than anyone. Books and songs are fine and all, but this is _Thorin_ , isn’t it? And what does he love more dearly than paper and pens and new togs and all that?”

The answer, to the general amusement of the room, was a ham. Preserved with smoke, bone still in, twine tied on already that it might be hung in the larder.

“You’re welcome,” Vigg said, before Thorin even had time to thank him. “Ordinarily, I’m not one to brag - ”

“Ha!” Óin snorted.

“ - but I must admit, we outdid ourselves,” he continued. “Joyous Name Day, laddie.”

Of course he felt embarrassed and too much at the center of things. And he _might_ have winked back a bit of water gathering at the corners of his eyes (if he cried over a ham, he’d never live it down). But, really, Thorin was touched, and grateful. He’d no idea what he’d done to deserve it, but looking around at his gathered friends and family, old and new, he couldn’t bring himself to say a bad word about any of it.

“Thanks,” he said, clearing his throat awkwardly. Then he grinned a crooked grin. “Hervor had the right of it - she outdid you all. But thanks, sincerely. Now...go on, get back to dancing.”

“And stop torturing you, aye,” Dwalin said, loudly, punching Thorin hard on the arm. “You heard him, lads, strike up a tune!”

Bofur and Víli struck their instruments up again, playing with redoubled vigor. Sayra bustled about, looking for a satchel for Thorin to borrow that he might transport his presents with greater ease. And Thorin himself managed to fade to the edge of the room, content to watch the festivities rather than take part.

But even the most energetic and eager dwarves needed a break and when there was such temptation as the pitchers of mead and sweet, buttery pastries that Alfi and Sayra offered, a round of eating to make up for all the exertion of the dancing was just the thing.

Víli flopped down heavily on the bench that Thorin had been sitting on, gittern on his lap, his hands each holding a different pie, one with sweet cream, the other with blueberry jam. He made to shove _both_ sweets in his mouth before he paused, looking between his bounty and Thorin’s empty mouth and beard that wasn’t crusted with sugar. “Fancy a pie?”

“Nah, go on ahead, I’ll wait,” Thorin said. Víli required no further permission and laid his treasures one on top of the other and stained his yellow beard purple with jam.

“Do you mean to dance again?” he asked, mouth full. “Only I feel like you’re being cheated and all, when I brung the music, but you’re sitting still all the while!”

“I’ve got ears, you play well, I think you’ve earned your supper,” Thorin replied. “I’m not a dancer, really. Time was I used to play to keep well out of it, but…”

He trailed off and Víli once again looked down at Thorin’s hands, empty.

“I never did find out what it was you learnt,” Víli recalled a long-ago conversation where he fruitlessly spent half an evening guessing what Thorin used to play, when there was money enough for instruments and time enough for dancing. “Drum?”

“No,” Thorin said. Then replied, “Harp.”

Víli snapped his fingers as though that reply had been in the fore of his mind all the while. “Aha! ‘Course you did! Them long fingers o’yours, don’t know why I figured on drums. One o’them big fellows as sits on the floor or was yours smaller?”

“I could play both,” Thorin said. “Doesn’t matter now, I haven’t the funds or inclination for either - so don’t get any ideas about going in on one sometime.”

“Oh, I…” Víli stopped himself for he couldn’t say so bold-faced a lie as that, his parents raised him better. “Alright. Seems a damn shame though - now you got to dance at all the parties, eh? Poor fellow.”

He grinned broadly and elbowed Thorin in the arm. Thorin accepted the affectionate assault with a good-natured smile - until Víli suddenly seized hold of his arm, eyes wide and excited.

“Ey! You know what just popped into me head? I could make it up to you - getting you a present you got no use for - ”

“I told you I was enjoying - ”

“I could teach you to play! Only the gittern, understand,” Víli said, grabbing his instrument by the neck with sticky fingers. “But it’s got strings, eh? I never teached no one afore, but I reckon as it’ll come easy to you for you’re clever and you already know how to play a tune on strings, eh? What say you? Eh?”

“I…” Thorin began, ready to demure the offer (honestly, Víli seemed a trifle intoxicated, it was likely he’d forget the whole thing by morning), but he paused. It’d be nice to play _something_ again. Just because he could live without the harp didn’t mean he didn’t miss it. And, selfishly, it _would_ keep him confined to a chair during the dancing. Or, at least, it would mean he was less likely to be taken by the arm and tossed or flung. “Alright. If you’d like.”

“If I’d like!” Víli exclaimed. “I’d be honored! Eh! Eh, Dís! I’m to be your brother’s Master!”

“In what?” she called, skipping over from the pastry table. “Smiling? You’ve done a fair job already.”

“Nah, in _music_!” Víli exclaimed with a flourish. “I’m going to teach him to play me gittern, so’s he don’t have to sit by on his own when we’re all a-playing and a-stamping.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful!” she cried, clapping her hands, eyes darting between Víli and Thorin. “It’s been...well, I can’t remember the last time you played. I’ll like it so much, I never learned to play a note on anything at all.”

“Careful, Víli,” Thyra advised, blatantly eavesdropping. “You’ll be opening up a school soon!”

“Now _there’s_ a thought,” Víli said, stroking more crumbs through his beard thoughtfully.

They were set upon by Dori, who was removing a handkerchief from his pocket. He held it aloft, as though it were a sword and Víli his hapless adversary. “You’re worse than Nori for keeping your beard clean! I’m not walking back to the house with you looking a sight like that - your fingers are blue.”

To Dori’s horror, Víli’s solution was to suck the remaining jam off his fingers one by one and draw his sleeve over his mouth to tidy himself up.

“And he’s to be your Master?” Dori remarked to Thorin, backing away as through bad table manners were catching. “Good luck.”

It might have been the mead. It might have been the pasty. Or it might have been the sight of all these dwarves, half of whom were strangers to the other half a year prior, all come together on his account. But there was a tiny part of Thorin that thought he’d fallen into quite a bit of luck already.

“Keep the handkerchief handy,” Thorin requested of Dori. “I’m going in on the pies before they’re all gone.”


	12. Chapter 12

They left in the wee hours - Alfi and Sayra had to coax life back into the fires upstairs to get a start on their working day. The guests were welcome to stay, they said - especially if they were of a mind to get some kneading in. 

Bofur and Víli declined, saying the bread would come out all cock-eyed and, Bifur and Bombur in agreement, marched them home to tumble into bed for a few hours rest.

They were some of the last guests, Irpa and her sons had taken their leave shortly before, Vigg and Hervor after them. Thorin, Dís, and Dwalin remained last of all, to help put the room to rights and tidy up - Sayra gifted Thorin with a burlap sack to take his presents home with him.

“Thank you,” he said as she got on her toes to warmly embrace him and kiss his cheeks. He didn’t even blush. “It was more than generous. I’m sorry we’ve kept you up so - ”

“Nevermind, nevermind!” Alfi said brightly, cheerful despite the hour and lack of sleep. “Happy to do it! It’s not every day your young fellow turns one-hundred, eh?”

Thorin smiled and said he supposed not. Dwalin hied back to the flat with them, Dís slung over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes - she’d been swaying on her feet and just as soon as he lifted her up, she was asleep. 

“Someone had a good time,” Dwalin observed wryly, cracking his jaw with a yawn. 

“Sure you don’t want to switch burdens?” Thorin asked, holding up his sack of presents. “I’m sure she weighs more than the ham.”

“M’fine,” Dwalin said, waving Thorin off with his free hand. “She’s not so heavy as that. Good fete, though. I’ll be expecting the same my next Name Day.”

“You’ll have it, I’m sure,” Thorin replied, grinning a little to himself. Perhaps it was because it was so late, perhaps it was the heady combination of good mead and better pies, but he couldn’t remember why he was so down on the idea, at first. It was a pleasant time. Especially for his kin, which mattered most. They needed something to lift themselves up. It was important, he realized, for folks to have something to look forward to.

The night was clear and the stars winked down on them, distant and cold, but the moon was up and lit a path for them. Abruptly, Thorin remembered something his grandfather said, had to be twenty-five years ago. Their first Durin’s Day on the road.   
Adad had been set against the idea of any sort of celebration, especially one that got the best hunters off of guarding the camp and onto a hunt to procure meat for their people.

 _“What’s there to celebrate?”_ he’d asked crossly. Tired, wet, aching, and the winter was coming on. It was a waste of time and resources. 

_“Durin’s Day, of course,”_ Udad said, as if it made all the sense in the world. That was the only time Thorin could remember his father calling his grandfather mad. 

But they’d had their meat. Succulent boar, roasted and falling off the bone. The guardsmen had quite a time of it, to hear tell, half of them had nearly been gored in the pursuit, but all survived. The stories got merrier and more outlandish as the night went on. There was singing. There was _laughter._ Laughter, for the first time in months. 

They went into the new year with renewed sense of vigor. Of companionship. And wasn’t that what Durin’s Day was for, in the end? Not sweets and bobbing for apples. Their people. Surviving. Against all odds, against orders from authorities higher than they could imagine. Against dragons. And they lived to tell the tales, sing the songs.

Thorin couldn’t rightly compare his Name Day to Durin’s Day, but he saw the need for a release. Something to look forward to. If not for himself, then for others.

Though, he couldn’t deny he’d enjoyed himself too. He was unspeakably grateful to Alfi and Sayra, his cousins, his new companions who had been strangers a year ago, yet went out of their way to do such a kindness for himself and his kin. Thorin opened the door to the flat and crept in with Dís and Dwalin, but stopped long enough only to drop his sack of presents onto the floor in his room. 

“Going out?” Dwalin said as he laid Dís on her pallet and covered her with a blanket. She hardly stirred, even as Dwalin’s deep voice rumbled so close to her ear. “Nightcap?”

“Nah,” Thorin said. He picked up a small throwing axe from the workbench in their chamber and tucked it in his belt. “Just running to the Temple. I’ll be back at dawn, or thereabouts.”

“Want company?” Dwalin offered, straightening up. Thorin shook his head. 

“No thanks,” he said, then nodded toward his own pallet on the floor. “Have a sleep. We’ll need one of us to have their wits about them come morning, eh?”

Dwalin gave him a little half smile, then crossed the small room and drew Thorin into his arms. “Joyous Name Day, nadad.”

Thorin smiled into Dwalin’s shoulder and gave him a squeeze back. “Thanks, nadadel. I’ll be back. Have a good sleep.”

Dwalin was snoring by the time Thorin closed the door to the flat and locked it firmly behind him. The night was so still and quiet that he took his time making his way to the interior of the range. There was no noise - no bustle yet from the shops and even the night animals seemed to have turned in for the evening. Nary an owl hooted, nor fox scampered about in the bushes, looking for a rabbit’s burrow to plunder. It was easy for Thorin to imagine that he was all alone in the world, like Father Durin, walking and wandering abroad by himself.

But he wasn’t. No such foolish thoughts could poison his mind, not after the party he’d had. He was _so_ grateful. And there was only one proper way to express his gratitude. 

The Temple offertory fire was burning low, this time of night, but burn it did and would, ‘til the world was Made New. Thorin donned a veil, plain white, from the customary rack that stood outside the Temple proper. There was one in every dwarven settlement the world over and any dwarf could gain admittance at any hour.

It was with a sharp pang in his chest that Thorin saw a few of his fellow-dwarves curled up beneath the benches, asleep, their own veils cushioning their heads even as they covered them. Reverence and desperation. It came to him again just how _fortunate_ he was, even here in exile. That he’d not fallen so far. That his people had not fallen so far, not to the fiery depths of the earth. 

They _could_ , though. If life had taught him nothing it was always that something worse could be lurking, just around the corner. Hence his fervent gratitude - and the knowledge that he must take nothing he was given, not even the scraps, for granted. 

The axe he removed from his belt was incomplete, meant as an offering to their Maker whose Creation was so tenderly and so finely Made. The blade had not been sharpened, though Thorin had carefully carved a fine braided design into the handle. It remained incomplete as a sign - upon this world, their work was temporary. It was only when they passed into the Halls of their Maker that _truly_ the potential craft of their people could be realized. 

Thorin approached the altar and lay the axe in the center of the flame, where it burned the hottest. Consigned to fire, he watched it burn and prayed. Prayed a prayer of gratitude that his people were surviving in the West. Prayed in thanks for such family and friends as he had, who toiled on his behalf and loved him so dearly though he was daily aware that he did not deserve such devotion. Prayed for his mother who he feared for. And prayed on behalf of those who had gone to the Halls of Waiting already, prayed that, when they were reunited, they might look upon him and his works upon the earth and retain a modicum of pride. 

Tears slipped from his eyes into his shorn beard and before Thorin turned away from the flames to make his way home in the lightening dark, he wiped them away with his sleeve.

More than anything, he _missed_ them. If there was one thing that might just make his Name Day perfect, not merely joyous, it would be his grandfather’s embrace. Frerin’s laughter. Even his father’s rough, rarely-received affection. But it wasn’t to be. They’d gone where it was not for him to follow - not yet. He still had much to do. 

A century gone by. It was a queer thing to think about. Sometimes, Thorin felt as old as the rock around them. Yet often he felt so very young, inexperienced, ignorant, helpless. Erebor could seem as a dream, sometimes. A faery kingdom from a storybook where all was warm stone and glowing torchlight. Yet sometimes he would wake confused in the mornings, to sunlight streaming across his face and he would think _Where am I?_

He knew now, as he trudged back to their little flat where the remains of his family lay sleeping. In the Ered Luin. For now - forging a little existence, biding his time. For he would go home, someday. They all would.

A present for himself, Thorin reflected as he turned the key in the lock. Or, if not a present, then a solemn vow. A century had taken him far from his home. Perhaps, if he was shrewd and strong and brave, the next century would take him back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thought this story needed a little tidy stopping point - as always, Thorin's heart is in Erebor.


End file.
